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CANNES AND THE HILLS 



VINTAGE, 



CANNES AND 
THE HILLS 

BY RfiNfi JUTA 


WITH EIGHT PICTURES 
IN COLOUR BY JAN JUTA 


BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 





H (180' 





«*) 

*) 


MANUFACTURED IN GREAT BRITAIN 


T.C’H 


DEDICATION 

TO 

RUDYARD KIPLING 


Lou Mir acid. 

Mougina A.M. 

My Dear Mr. Kipling, 

When I asked ycm to come up to our 
hills you were not able to, so now, may I 
send the hills to you, for you are greater than 
Mahomet. You have taught me to see on 
mound and in vale the history left by dead 
men, and to kindle a soul under the ribs of 
metropolitan death. 

In gratitude and in remembrance please 
accept this book. 

Yours, 

R^NJ^ JUT A. 















CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I. Arrivals in Cannes 15 

II. A Legend of Marseilles 29 

III. Some Saints of the Riviera 35 

IV. The Hermitage of St. Cassien 45 

V. The Larins Islands 53 

VI. The Saga of Ste. Marguerite 65 

VII. A Walk from La Roquette 77 

VIII. An Interlude in May 89 

IX. Fetes and Friends 93 

X. On Vineyards 101 

XI. Sertorius Camp on Castellaras 107 

XII. The Chapel of N6tre Dame de Vie 113 

XIII. The Aurelian Way 123 

XIV. On the Est:^rel 131 

XV. The Virgins of old Cannes 143 

XVI. A Legend of Mandelieu 157 

XVII. Napoleon Camps in Cannes 169 

XVIII. The Orange Flower R^colte 175 

XIX. The Flowers of the Riviera 181 

XX. Provencal Dishes 191 

XXI. Amateur Farming in Provence 199 




























LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Vintage 

Frontispiece 

Cannes Harbour 

PACING PAGE 

16 

St. Cassien 

48 

Isle of St. Honorat 

56 

Mougins 

80 

A Village place 

96 

N6tre Dame de Vie 

136 

Gathering Orange Blossom 

176 





















ARRIVALS IN CANNES 


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I 

ARRIVALS IN CANNES 


T here exist details and traditional accuracies 
and inaccuracies of various entries into Cannes. 
Classic entries, haphazard entries, determined, 
ruthless entries; for though the archives of the 
countryside are embodied mainly in the silent knowledge 
of the olive trees, there are a few signs and wonders in 
prehistoric stone camps and coffins, earthen pots, old 
monnaies, and some rare old papers—“ vieux papiers.” 
And then there is the saga of the people, the barometrical, 
atavistic people of the seaside and the countryside, 
with their immutable lives, their immutable customs and 
fancies. True, the old costumes of the country, even 
those of traditional Grasse, have disappeared, the pre¬ 
vailing black being the last vestige of tradition; but the 
people—oh! the people are there, leavened, as they have 
always been, by the latest invader. The latest invader 
is the Italian from the North—^from the mountains: 
and the last entry, classic or otherwise, is mine : Marina 
enters—^and stays. 

And I have entered many times and in many ways : 
from the North, in an ambulance in wartime, through 

15 


16 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


high mountain passes where the little mosses had lately 
been covered with snow; when the sun and the oranges 
of Cannes assumed proportion that excluded a further 
need of heaven. Another time on foot over the Esterel, 
in the moonlight; through Mandelieu; above the ruins of 
Arluc, the cypress trees on the hill of St. Cassien, 
silhouettes of pagan days. And centuries before, from 
the opposite direction the Huns entered, under their 
chief Alboin, fresh from their appalling destruction of 
the beautiful Roman town of Cemenalum, the present 
Cimiez. They utterly destroyed the Roman town of 
Arluc in the plains below St. Cassien, and the Roman 
Station of Thermes, where were the hot springs and 
baths. 

This awful Lombard destruction had been predicted 
by a pious old anchorite, St. Hospice, some years before : 
“ The Lombards shall come into Gaul and shall utterly 
destroy several cities for the punishment of the Gauls 
who have committed great sins, especially in Provence.” 

But to return to my own milder entries. This time 
in a crowded train, overheated, overcrowded. The joy of 
running into the warm hours round Avignon, then later, 
with the agonies of a sleepless night still upon me, the 
relief of Marseilles in the sun, the gradual opening of 
carriage windows, the scent of sea, and red-stemmed 
pines, the fleeting vision of red rock and green blue 
sea, the background glory of the snow-capped Italian 
Alps; and so—^past gay villa gardens and palm trees 
into the gare de Cannes. 

There have been bleak grey days of arrival when the 
train has been followed, along the Boulevard du Midi 



CANNES HARBOUR AND THE SUQUET. 











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ARRIVALS IN CANNES 


17 


with its perpetually washed-away esplanade, by a 
howling, shrieking mob of sea-gulls ; when the limited 
fury of the Mediterranean waves has dashed even as far 
as the railway lines. There have been days of cold 
winds, winter “ mistrals ” blowing off the snow line, 
which almost encircles Cannes and its country. There 
have been days of hot African sirocco, which blowing 
once for seventy-two hours over the island of Sicily 
kept me hidden deep in the dark cool shades of the 
Syracusian Latomea until its fury was spent. I had 
first met the sirocco blo\Adng up hot and parched from 
the desert, over the cool Papyrus groves round the 
fountain of Cyrene. It followed us along the green 
Anapos river, withering the yellow iris and terrifying 
the nightingales and king-fishers. It caught us with 
a fury on the marshy grounds where the river joins the 
sea, and swept with us in blasting hotness across the 
Bay of Syracuse. What a wind ! Parching ! Best 
on days like this to be a Christian, lurking along sub¬ 
terranean passages to cool, hidden meeting places. 

Here, round Cannes, the sirocco comes on one with a 
suddenness, and the world is a vast melting pot and the 
grasses wither. And so on, for three days. It seems that 
all winds in this world last for three days. The sirocco 
fortunately is an occasional summer wind, and well to be 
within four thick stone walls while it blows. It heralds 
the moment of forest fires, when acres of pine woods 
blaze to heaven, and the wind sweeps along the flames 
certain of an easy passage. But of these anon. 

Entries are my theme; classic, culminating perhaps 
in the solemn Roman entry. For years before, the 
B 


18 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Phoenicians had stolen in quietly with a gentle lap 
of a sail; and later the Greeks stepped off their hated 
galleys and made their winter camping grounds. They 
used Theoule as a custom house, and Napoule as a 
trading station. Their chief port and town was further 
round the coast at Agay. There, on a high peak of 
the Esterel, just above the bay, they built their Temple 
to Pallas Athene. No self-respecting Greek merchant 
was going to remain one second on sea if there was a 
propitious land at hand. Better to pull ship over 
land, yea, even over the Esterel to the nearest river, 
than face the uncertain sea they dreaded. Hence their 
entries were instructive and protective, devoid of 
unnecessary pomp or pageant. 

Sit imder the shade of the curious zebra-like trees 
in the Alices, the shady avenues edging the harbour of 
Cannes, drink with us a quiet “ aperitif ” in the sacred 
circle of the Cafe des Alices, towards the end of the 
season. Slow-moving, white-robed, fezzed figures slink 
between shadow and sun, bearing carpets from Tunis, 
Angora sheep skins, silk shawls, worked curtains from 
across the sea; they bargain for ever, bargain in their 
slow even voices, their lying gentle voices, soothing 
though inspiring no confidence, their calculating de¬ 
fensive eyes taking little account of the unlikely buyer; 
their slim. Eastern figures for ever pushing their wares 
before your eyes. So the Phoenicians and the Levant 
people did before them. Bargaining and plunder, 
bartering, need, and trade, and commerce from Marseilles 
to Nicea. The original people watched the invader, 
then fraternized. The Oxybians from their town 


ARRIVALS IN CANNES 


19 


Egitna—Ekitna—Kana—Cannes—^that’s how it runs 
through the slovenly medium of many ages. 

Egitna, a sharp, rocky, low-walled town camp, 
full of dark smallish people who buried their dead 
crouching in shallow tombs, and fraternized with the 
Greeks who taught them the culture of the olive and 
the vine. They believed in gratitude and neighbourly 
bonds, and in the immortality of the soul. But cute 
people, “ slim,” or described best by the French word 
“ interesse ”—out for themselves—an eye to the main 
chance. Their name had two alternative derivations 
—through the Greek “ Eli ” “ men of the mountains,” 
or through the Celtic “ men of the sea.” Both would 
describe them. Economical, nervous, serious and war¬ 
like people, but better still at fishing and piracy, plunder¬ 
ing merchant ships, midnight raidings on neighbouring 
shores and a rapid sail towards the friendly islands not 
far distant, called after a great chief, Lero. These 
islands were littered \vith good caves in which to bury 
the plunder. 

Oh, these Islands, full of ghosts of pirates and 
robbers, marauders, saints and bishops, Romans, 
Spaniards, mysterious prisoners, and even the ghost 
of a French actress who lived and died on the island of 
St. Honorat, sandwiched in between monastic days and 
lapses. Did all these ghosts eat “ Bouillabaisse ” I 
wonder ?—“ Bouillabaisse,” food fit for Southern gods 
who loved good oil and strong garlic, as made by the 
seamen of the South ? In Bouillabaisse you may find 
the apotheosis of all the tastes and strong flavours of 
all the invaders of these Mediterranean shores. 


20 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Behold Marina on a fair day in May (when all the 
hivemants have returned to the spring snows of the 
North), on the Lerins islands, the sun rays stronger than 
any better day in an English midsummer; Marina, 
encamped from the comfortable joys of a motor launch 
and a passage of fifteen minutes from the Cannes harbour. 
Here on the grey rocks of Ste. Marguerite, near the ruins 
of an old tower, under the low sweeping shade of the 
pines, a fire, a large pot and two stalwart fishermen, 
preparing with cunning and solemn rite of bay leaf, 
oil, tomato, garlic, lobster, fish, potato and saffron, 
the magic glorious dish of the people of the South, “ La 
Bouillabaisse.” Certain, that the ghosts of the Lerins 
islands hovered around that savoury, most exquisite 
smell. Certain, the Ligurian chief, Lero himself, 
hopped around the magic circle, his red-sailed craft 
furled and tethered in some deep creek. Certain, that 
a fat Abbot, drawn from devotion and diplomacy in his 
monastery on St. Honorat, paddled quickly as dignity 
allowed from the low lying opposite shore across the 
narrow passage. And a stately, swinging young Roman 
named Julius Catulinus, scenting the aroma, tramped 
across the thyme and camomile herbs of the island from 
the Roman school for boatmen lying on the land side. 
Certain, there were Spanish Grandees, the Genoese 
admiral Andrea Doria, from his wraith fleet manoeuvring 
around Antibes and Golfe Jouan, and a certain Napoleon 
Buonaparte on his way through from Elba out towards 
Italy in the sea mists. 

A goodly company Marina entertains. A picnic for 
the Shades. And later, when the saffron soup with its 


ARRIVALS IN CANNES 


21 


rounds of bread had been eaten and the Shades beheld 
the lobster ready, a tall, strong dark woman with 
sparkling eyes, dressed in black, with a small-crowned, 
wide-brimmed, black hat perched on her dark hair, 
and a silver dish in her hand, smilingly stepped into the 
circle and helped herself to the Bouillabaisse, and carried 
it away through the wood. The “ woman of Mougins,” 
she who was servant to the prisoner in the iron mask ; 
he, lying in the great prison on the cliffs beyond the 
woods. 

Now this is surely the real way to enter Cannes— 
through the joys of the stomach ! And so you will grow 
to know immediately the people of Cannes, who are now 
great ghosts and were great eaters too. The new 
invader is a poor dog, a meagre eater, he eats pate and 
tomato and has no part in this company. Presently 
we shall meet more Shades, but they will be passed 
along the great Aurelian Road on their way to and 
from the Forum Julii, which is now Fr^jus, beyond the 
Esterel. 

The arrival of the Romans was not peaceable like 
that of the Greeks. The Oxybians recognized con¬ 
querors and they fought and were beaten: leaving 
their city to the new arrivals they obeyed the Roman 
decree : that the inhabitants of a conquered city 
should be banished for seven years twelve leagues away 
from their citadel. And Mongins or Mougins or Mons- 
Egitnoe became of importance. Here at least, were it 
a question of unconquered pride, the ancient inhabi¬ 
tants dominated Cannes or Egitna and saw eye to eye 


22 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


with the opposite Roman camp of Castrum Sertori, 
later called Castellaras. The Greeks had gone, be¬ 
queathing to the land and to the people a certain phil¬ 
osophy, deeply rooted in all modem Provencals, a 
kindly tolerance and a mysticism far deeper than any 
form of faith. Possibly, it was the combination of 
these three moral inheritances that gave to Christianity 
so spontaneous and easy a reception in the South. 
There was a credence and a sympathy which poured 
balm and mystic glory over each new hermit who sought 
a safe cave in the Esterel mountains. This is the inheri¬ 
tance of the Greeks of Marseilles-Marsallia, not, as 
some chroniclers would have it, that the only souvenir 
left by the Greeks in Provence was the language and the 
money. The Greeks’ allies, the Romans, came twice, 
to help quell the constant warrings of the Litoral 
people, grown suddenly antagonistic : once, the Roman 
envoys come for counsel, were fallen upon while debark¬ 
ing in Cannes harbour and had hastily to retreat; they 
came again with an army under Quintus Opimus and 
fought and never conquered completely these Ligur¬ 
ians : indeed, after eighty years warring and sparring, 
they failed to obtain a breadth of twelve Stradea for 
the purpose of making a public road. But with their 
great wisdom and their flair for the perfecting of a 
conquered colony, they ruled so gently and cautiously, 
that, though they changed the name ot Egitna into 
Castrum Marseilianum, the town remained to all intents, 
for many years a Greek trading village—a “ counter,” 
as it was called. This until some fifty years B.C., when 
Julius Caesar after the fall of Marseilles annexed all 


ARRIVALS IN CANNES 23 

the Greek Colonies along the Litoral: even then, with 
the colonizing genius of the Romans, the Greek Gover¬ 
nor was left in his position of importance at Castrum 
Romanum (Cannes). 

The Greek geographer, Strabo, contemporary of the 
Emperor Augustus, the Elder Plinj^-, and Tacitus, leaves 
us records and curiously intriguing details of the life 
and doings of the Litoral: but vague enough at times 
to leave scope for conjecture, even if one rules out 
entirely that psychic knowledge which yet remains on 
the twin antennae of our consciousness—science and 
magic. Let us call this sense the consciousness of 
atmosphere; archives in ether: irrefutable, the day 
that the sixth sense is established and used for our 
needs. 

The trace of Roman domination we meet in ancient 
vineyards among old tombs, in the dilapidated Arena 
at Frejus, their great Forum Julii (built by Augustus 
in honour of his dishonourable daughter Julia), in half- 
ruined aqueducts and wayside memorial tablets, old 
altars, and old names. 

For the next arrivals and those who pressed on their 
heels left hardly one stone upon the other. That there 
was any further life, spirit or history after the ultimate 
defeat of the Saracens at Fraxinet by William of Pro¬ 
vence is a perpetual memorial to the strong roots and 
the placid acceptance of this people, who survive the 
endless invasions. The hosts of Barbarians from the 
North poured down, with fire and famine in their 
train; the Litoral had hardly recovered, when the 
greatest people then in the world, the Saracens, swept 


24 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


over Southern Europe. The half-hazy fairy tale told 
to English children of the Crusades, here in the South, 
assumes the importance it deserves. One now knows 
why all the men in Europe left their women and children 
and an aged priest or two in their Towers of the keep, to 
do quaint needle work and polish extra swords and 
write painstakingly old missals, and almost to die of 
starvation. One knows why Kings who shipped to 
Acre were made Saints, and why the narrow pilgrim 
road winding down from Avignon to Grasse was pro¬ 
tected at every vantage point by the watch towers and 
the small chapels-of-ease of the Knight Templars. The 
tale of the Saracens in Europe has to be read in Provence 
to be finally understood. 

There is only one oasis in this desert of pillage and 
fire, the story of the Saracen Princess who loved the 
noble Guy de Bourguignon, and that tale will be told 
(Marina tells it to a child named Gillian) in another 
chapter. 

And anyway, these ghastly invasions are hardly part 
of the chapter which professes to deal in classic entries 
and arrivals, nor part of that in which we meet shades 
along the great Aurelian way to Italy. 

But we must count the arrival and the continued stay 
of the Austrians in 1746 ; of their General, Maximilian 
Ulysses Brown : the epitaph of their unfortunate sojourn 
has drifted into the language, for when it is a question 
of bearing something with patience and resignation, 
the people say—“ it will go one day, even the Germans 
went.” The next classical arrival which so fascinates 
that a whole chapter must be devoted to it, is the arrival 


ARRIVALS IN CANNES 


25 


and stay, mostly in bivouac, of the Emperor Napoleon 
Buonaparte. Cannes has witnessed undisturbed such 
arrivals and departures as those of Augustus, the Buona¬ 
parte King Murat, fleeing from Naples; the flight of 
the Duchess of Guise to Florence; and a later arrival 
that comes under the heading “ haphazard ” is the 
arrival in the early nineteenth century of Lord Brougham. 
This Englishman is the first of that long, continuous 
procession of Anglo-Saxons who have streamed down 
into Cannes ever since the noise of its beauty went 
forth. 

He was for Italy : all good aristocrats went to Italy 
in those days. Shelley had died there, Byron had loved 
there, the Ambassador in Rome ranked next almost to 
the Pope; the Sermonetas, the Sforza Caesarini, the 
Colonnas, the Borghesi, had all married into important 
English families; the Rome season was part of the 
London season—en avance; the Italian Riviera was 
the Riviera—until Lord Brougham discovered Cannes ! 

Because of cholera in France, the frontier of Piedmont, 
namely the Var river between Cannes and Nice, was 
closed to travellers. So, hearing the distressing news 
soon after leaving Aix, the big coach of the Broughams 
rattling down the narrow streets of old Cannes, stopped 
at the famous Hotel Princhinat, later the Hotel de la 
Poste, situated at the foot of Suquet on the old Port. 
There was no foreshore then, no mole. Beyond the inn 
on a rocky edge, a small fisher chapel, now destroyed for 
harbour purposes. To the right of the inn, what is 
now the long wide sweep of the Boulevard du Midi 
and the Brougham Gardens, was marshy ground. 




26 CANNES AND THE HILLS 

canes and reeds and the wild iris where the rocks 
ended. 

And from this date Cannes ceased to be of historical 
interest. It began its career of white villas, railways, 
shops, croisettes, casinos and people everyone knows. 


A LEGEND OF MARSEILLES 



II 

A LEGEND OF MARSEILLES 


T his is a legend of Marseilles, that “ town 
of the Ligurians in the country of the 
Celts.” It would have but small excuse in 
appearing in this book of Cannes, were it not for an 
old inscription in Marseilles, which runs—“ Ville des 
Phoceens ! soeur de Rome ! rivale de Carthage ! ” 
There’s a banner to fly ! They were not modest these 
Greeks of Massilia! But, it being a legend of the 
surrender of a people through love, and the people 
being Ligurians, the neighbours of the Ligurian Oxybians 
and the other people being the first Greeks of Marseilles, 
I feel this beautiful story of Gyptis may be borrowed 
for Cannes, as one may borrow of a friend or a relative. 

It happened in the sixth century b.c., in 589, in the 
first year of the forty-fifth Olympiade, that Salyes 
Mannus, king of the Segobrians, gave a great feast in 
honour of his beautiful daughter Gyptis. To the feast 
were bidden the chiefs of the neighbouring towns: 
among them was the Oxybian chief, great sailor and 
warrior, Lero. The Salyes chieftains and the chieftains 
of the neighbouring tribes brought to Gyptis all the 
best gifts they had to offer. One laid at her slim brown 
29 


30 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


feet reed crates, filled with oranges and sweet grapes 
from Iberia; for they were adventurous mariners and 
vied with all the Mediterranean peoples in adventure 
and commerce. Another chief presented some yards 
of lovely dyed wool from Tyre, from where his ship 
had lately returned ; while another, a young man, who, 
from much travelling across the waters had seen beautiful 
works of Greek art, had copied a statue of a slim-bodied 
young man, on his knees, with uplifted outstretched 
arms. This figure pleased Gyptis very much and she 
smiled favourably upon the young chief who offered 
her this gift, which she refused to be parted from, 
carrying it to the “ concours ” of games of distant 
lands preceding the feast which Mannus, who tenderly 
loved his daughter, had decided must terminate in 
G 5 ^tis choosing a husband from among the assembled 
chiefs. But towards the middle of the day, before the 
jousts of strength and prowess were to take place, a ship 
was sighted making for the port of the Salyes. The 
vessel sheltered in a little cove, and, presently arrived 
a message to the chieftain. 

Mannus and his people knew the Mariners of the ship. 
They were Phoceans from one of the richest and most 
prosperous towns on the Ionian coast, but a town now 
too thickly populated and almost unable to support its 
increasing inhabitants. The Phoceans were a kindly 
people, and in their ports the Salyes sailors had often 
foimd shelter from pirates and tempest, and had no 
doubt boasted of their lovely country in Gallia. The 
Phoceans brought with them presents: presents of 
chiselled golden objects, arms worked to exquisite per- 


A LEGEND OF MARSEILLES 31 


fection with all the cunning and taste of Greek art. 
These they begged the Salyes to accept. In return, 
the Phoceans besought a piece of land where they might 
colonize under the protection and friendship of Mannus 
and thus give greater scope for their numerous peoples 
in their overcrowded country. Mannus, full of happi¬ 
ness and the spirit of festival, would grant all, and 
invited the band to assist at the fete. And Protis, the 
leader, walked ahead. And here the eyes of Gyptis lit 
upon a hero, more beautiful than the legendary Heracles, 
she had heard of from friends in the North, more grace¬ 
ful than the slim Greek statue that the aspiring suitor 
had so earnestly copied for her gift. And when he 
spoke, Gyptis dared no longer lift her eyes. She 
trembled and was afraid, for no sooner had she seen 
Protis than she had loved him. The fete was con¬ 
tinued, and instead of the usual Salian dances the 
Greeks danced—in slow rhymic measure—^the dance of 
the yoimg men before the maidens. And as Protis 
danced, his eyes rested upon Gyptis. 

When night fell they feasted in a deep wood where 
great torches of pine lighted the banquet. G 3 q)tis 
parted the garlands of flowers so that she might better 
see Protis, and Protis, though he spoke to the chief¬ 
tains, spoke really to the heart of Gyptis—^and to her 
alone—of his land and culture, of feasts and feats, of 
the glory of the temples; and he spoke in the poetry 
of his people of the ways of their gods ; of war, and of 
love. 

The chieftains dared not interrupt, though now all 
saw the great thing that was as a miracle before them ; 


32 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


some were mad with jealousy, but all held their 
peace. 

So it happened that when the feast was over, Mannus 
with trembling hand filled the cup with the water of the 
sacred fountain, and Gyptis took the cup in her two slim 
brown hands and lifted it to her lips—but her eyes 
sought Protis always. She drank three drops, then 
advancing as in a dream, slowly, towards Protis, she 
handed him the marriage cup. 

And it was thus that the Phoceans settled on the 
ground given as a marriage gift, and they made their 
port, and built their acropolis on the heights of the 
Carmes with much ceremony and many sacred cakes 
called “ Massa,” offered to the goddess of their choice. 
And the peoples crying “Massa, Massa,” saw the 
Temple built, and later, the town, gathering and growing 
below. Some say the name Massilia came because of 
the sacred cakes offered to the Goddess on the great 
day of the anniversary, when the spontaneous free action 
of Gyptis welded the Ligurian, Latin temperament to the 
suave dignified elegance of mind and body of the Greek. 

This is the legend of two great lovers who are 
long dead. 


SOME SAINTS OF THE 
RIVIERA: AND CARNIVAL 


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SOME SAINTS OF THE RIVIERA: AND 
CARNIVAL 

T he bells, the cracked, beloved mad old bells of 
the Suquet church used to peal with especial 
zest on the day of St. Jinn Jinn. Now their 
cracked inefficient perfection has been gorgeously 
replaced. New beautiful sedate bells grace the belfry 
whose stones kept Saracens in their proper place, and 
later with southern adaptiveness admitted the con¬ 
querors as master. The south submits to the inevitable, 
always. But the new bells are too superior for St. 
Jinn Jinn; tom-toms would be more in the spirit of 
this saint, whose name savours of the East—Djin Djin, 
the Djinn of Djinns, the greatest of all geni: who 
knows ? He is now the patron saint of the Croisette, 
the place of parade, an atavistic saint, more intensely 
Cannois than all the Virgins of the Voyage (did not the 
Virgin land somewhere along this southern coast ?), far 
more belonging to this curious heterogenous people than 
all other saints in the calendar. 

I fancy Jinn Jinn was the totem of dead Cannes. I 
suspect his definite name came upon him and remained 
after the arrival of the Saracens : but no doubt he 
existed before their turbulent misrule : no doubt the 
35 


36 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


people of Egitna worshipped gods of sorts: they 
believed in the immortality of the soul: someone had 
made an altar to Isis on the seashore. Jinn Jinn was a 
god perhaps, their definite sympathetic god, in the misty 
indefinite days of their city of Egitna. He was not a 
great warrior: he was a kindly juju, with a winking 
kindly eye for his pirate followers. He made faces at 
the Phoenicians and their galleys; he laughed at the 
Greeks, doing excursions from their winter trading 
stations at Agay and Trayas ; perhaps, he was a little 
overcome by the Roman pomp of Roman governors, 
for they turned him into a Saint! That gave him a new 
lease of life. St. Jinn Jinn, he of the Croisette, and sun, 
and fetes, and confetti thrown to keep away the evil 
ones : Harlequin, in his black masque, the devil to be 
made friends with—^for the people of the south are too 
wise to fight the devil and all evil ones ; they give him 
gifts, they call them by good names, lest they should be 
greater devils and work much ill. Carnival is his great 
moment, for it is the festival of the rebirth of the world, 
the breaking of the Eliptical Egg : the cracking of the 
shell of the earth, and the rebirth; the Renaissance; 
the Sepulchre giving the body back to life with renewed 
beauty—beauty unrecognisable ; Persephone returning 
arms the darkness of the underworld, leaping into the 
from of Ceres ; the waters giving up their dead ; Jonah 
reborn from the belly of death;—^these are the cars of 
this Carnival, great and small, gilded, rusty cars, fairy 
tales, nursery rhymes, myths, truths. A long proces¬ 
sion to wind and meander through the narrow streets of 
Cannes. 


SAINTS OF THE RIVIERA 37 


And behold! the Clown, the Clown omnipotent, 
seated as Jove, tremendous in size, to show his impor¬ 
tance. Look ! our Saint is become King Carnival; our 
Djinn assumes kindlier guise. His stomach is well-filled 
—too well-filled in proportion to the gifts of the faithful. 
No aesthete, this saint Carnival. His huge face is a 
grin as he grinned in his juju days at the early invaders, 
so he grins at you—you foreigners—“ Estrangers ”— 
you poires, pears to be sucked ; sucked very dry, and 
then crystalized; so that you will gamble with your 
last penny and drop dead at the eighteenth hole of the 
Mandelieu golf-links—of course he grins. He knows, 
this Saint Jinn Jinn. He is the piper, and is in league 
with the sun and the sea and the roses. You have 
brought bad servants with you—they look after your 
luggage but they give you away, you Estrangers ; and 
old Jinn Jinn is in league with them. He knows your 
servants, who should be your slaves, and are your 
masters. He knows: the sun and the sea and the moon, 
and the roses, and the scent of the orange blossom at 
night, the silhouette of a cypress and the song of the 
nightingales, the lure of the tables, the sound of the 
jazz, they know what your senses are, your servant 
senses ; how they will give you away ! So the Saint 
Carnival smiles and grins over a cloud of paper confetti 
that were once good little cakes of meal or rye, flung to 
appease his godship—^now, synthetic bribery, multi¬ 
coloured, falling amid the trampled flowers of Flora. 

We must not forget, should we be too inclined to linger 
over the possibilities of this carnivalesque Saint, that in 
one day, the Saracens on St. Honorat sent five hundred 


38 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


saints to heaven, which anyhow gives nearly an average 
of two saints a day during the year. But prepare for a 
further surprise. The human nature of this people of 
the South is loving and giving and all embracing. 
There is St. Fenian—a Saint, indeed, of the Slackers, the 
ne’er-do-much, a pleasure-loving idle person, drunk and 
disorderly, probably : but how comforting a religion 
this, where Fenians have their special Saint. Also, 
there is St. Estropie—^the Saint of the duds, the hope¬ 
less ! We smile and are appeased. I fancy there are 
saints for every day in the Midi, year, and for you 
and me. 

During the summer months, after the recolte of 
the orange flower, there is a saintly occasion for a fete 
day nearly every day in every small village on the 
Litoral. Certainly, the fetes are degenerating into 
jazz and a travelling show, but, on the feast day of St. 
Jean, they still light the street fires, the sacred fires of 
Baal or Moloch to be “ passed through ” ; they still 
play “ boules ” in the main street, as the “ games ” 
were played by the Greeks, oblivious of motor char-a- 
bancs, or the squeaking rattling tram; and beyond 
Frejus they still slay the white bull, and the young men 
who are virgins eat of the entrails, and the young man 
who is youngest and most beautiful partakes of the 
role of priest and god ; he stands in the church near the 
high altar and exhorts his brethren. This is a festival of 
the men, and of the Romans who worshipped Mithras 
and is among the Greek mysteries ; to say nothing of 
Christian ones. The fires of the worshippers of Baal 
are lit in the streets and on all farms on the eve of St. 


SAINTS OF THE RIVIERA 89 


Jean: and the games of the Greeks, on their days of 
festivral—^you may see them being played any fete day 
through the long hot summer months, when the dilapi¬ 
dated, roadway altars are decorated with the flowers of 
the people who pass by, and the aureole of the Blessed 
Virgin is lost among the pink hedge-roses and the blue 
borrage which compose Demeter’s Crown. 

Among the legends of Provence is one. The Cars of 
Osiers, which has a part in any chapter on Carnival. I 
read it some years ago in Arles, as written by Monsieur 
Charles Roux. I will relate is as far as I remember. 

You may know the Riviera flower baskets made of 
split rushes, baskets made for the export of flowers and 
fruit; composed of those curious canes that grow in 
any swampy ground along the Riviera coast. Think, 
when you pack your carnations or tangerines in these 
neat little baskets, upon their far distant origin. For 
these, a hundred times magnified, placed upon wheels, 
and drawn by good Gaulois oxen, decorated and filled 
with flowers and foliage, once took part in the great 
fete of the Floralies, a fete of Flora which coincided with 
our Carnival. 

Now after the death of Mannus, the Salyes chieftain, 
Comanus the brother of Gyptis reigned in his father’s 
stead. And there grew an ever-increasing jealousy on 
the part of the Salyes, against the flourishing town of 
the Phocean colonists. But their jealousy and ire were 
not a match for the strength and pleasantness of the 
Greeks. Also, they feared the Greeks, these half- 
civihzed Gauls. 

Arrived the moment of the Carnival, the Floralies, 


40 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


when the women decked themselves in new colours, 
when dry grain was thrown in the streets and all was 
laughter and dancing. According to their custom, 
the neighbouring peoples were invited to assist at the 
festivities. And Comanus, the new king, and his 
jealous frightened chiefs, resolved to profit by this 
splendid occasion. They had heard from Greek lips 
the legend of Troy, and they would profit by Greek 
experience. 

The decorated waggons and cars of the Ligurians 
who were to assist in the carnival were drawn up in 
readiness to enter the town of Massilia. That night, 
the young Gallic warriors, armed and brave, hid them¬ 
selves amid the flowers and greens of the carnival cars, 
to be gently drawn into the unsuspecting city; and in 
the dawn to open the gates to their invading, avenging 
army. 

But there went with the rush baskets not only 
warriors, but a lovely lady, a relative of the king, and 
she loved a Greek in Massilia. And during the long 
night hours, in his rooms on the seashore, under the 
spell of that amoral Southern moon, she told him, 
amid many vows of secrecy, the way of her coming 
to him, and of the armed young men who lay that night 
among the flowers in the carnival cars. 

The young gallant leapt from the arms of his lady 
and warned the magistrates and great men of Massilia. 
The flower-hidden warriors were killed where they lay, 
and next day a trap was laid for the king and his 
chieftains. Comanus was killed with seven thousand 
Salyes at the gate of the city. Athene verily looked 


SAINTS OF THE RIVIERA 41 


after her own people, for once more, the love of a Gaulois 
woman for a Greek went to the making of this Phocean 
colony and to its magnitude and glory. But from that 
day the great gates of Marseilles were closed to any 
armed stranger, in peace time or in war. 




THE HERMITAGE OF ST. 
CASSIEN 


















IV 

THE HERMITAGE OF ST. CASSIEN 

S T. CASSIEN or Arluc lies half-way between Cannes 
and La Napoule on the Route Nationale. The 
Mound of St. Cassien was not the labour of 
man’s hand. This 1 have from the early report of a 
scientist who wrote on the mineralogy and the geography 
of the Var. He calls it “an antedeluvian pudding,” 
formed by calcair and “ turf ” deposited by the waters 
of the Siagne. 

The Romans certainly may have adapted this 
“ poudingue ” to suit their occasion which was to 
protect the Aurelian way, running below the mount, 
and our way also if we have come from or to Cannes. 
There is the old story that they raised this fortified 
post in one night. But long before the Romans came 
the people of the country, the Oxybians, placed their 
altar there—perhaps in honour of the sun god or their 
goddess who may possibly have had a name so resembling 
“ Tuan ” or Venus, as to give permission to say it was 
a temple to an Oxybian Venus. There are even some 
old legends which place the site of the original Egytna 
between the mount and the sea, and this would account 
for the importance of Arluc. 

45 


46 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Anyhow, the Romans found a good altar ready for 
them, and the Oxybians turned out of their city at 
Cannes, went to their exile on the Hill of Mougins, 
the necessary twelve leagues of exile imposed by the 
conquering Romans; from here they might see the 
sim rise in Italy and set in France, “ then descending 
immortal, immortal to rise again.” 

The Roman conquerors immediately gave a name to 
the mount, calling it Ara Lucis—autel du Bois Sacre— 
Altar of the sacred wood. From this may have come Arluc 
the name given to the entirely disappeared village at the 
mouth of the Siagne. The Romans required water con¬ 
veniently near for their Ara-Luci garrison, and turned the 
course of the river that it flowed well round the west 
clifl of their mount, forming almost an island. And the 
Roman Temple to Venus flourished and remained in 
the hearts of the people long after the Romans left, 
to the disturbance of the Christian Abbot of the Lerins. 
He found that the virgins and priestesses of Venus were 
a sore blot upon land so lately christianized and so near 
to the very fount of the new religion ; stories of import 
were brought to the abbey on the old island of Plantasia, 
smallest of the two Lerins. There were the three holy 
men who had escaped from the hands of the Moors at 
Agay ; they had taken ship at the port of Arluc, below 
the Temple, and had told of rites and riotous sounds 
and the beauty of the priestesses of Venus. And this 
in the very midst of a tide of holy men, hermits, saints, 
martyrs, each on a little pedestal in shape of a church, 
or crouched in a cave in the Esterel. So St. Honorat 
sent for a most holy mother, the abbess Oratoria, and 


ST. CASSIEN 


47 


she and her nuns swooped down upon the Temple and 
installed themselves Virgins in stone. Pallid wraiths 
of the golden glories of Aphrodite’s vestals; thin, 
tortured virginal souls, their gothic folds sedately 
veihng gothic bodies. Here they flourished on the 
very threshold of the pagan altar, living a lie to every 
tenet of the faith and the rites of the great goddess, until 
vengeance was hurled in the shape of the Lombards in 
578. These barbarians ravished and raped and plundered 
and left nothing but the sacred wood behind them, that 
sacred Bois ” one day to be devastated by Napoleon. 
Vengeance fell upon him. You will see how the com¬ 
promise happened in the end. Saint Nazaire, abbot of 
Les Lerins in 610 re-established the pious asylum of 
Virgins, owing to the awful gossip originating from the 
neighbourhood of the sacred wood. 

A rich enchanter, , a magician named Cloaster, raised 
a very beautiful, very unholy altar on the site of the 
other two. The people, say the old chroniclers of the 
Larins, paid homage to an idol—perhaps; anyhow, 
there was a goat in the plain below and many people 
“ worshipped ” ; and the dreadsome rites took place 
in the heart of the wood on the hill. Bites we may only 
guess at; black magic in fact. A young man visited 
Arluc and its sorcerer and nearly died; saved by the 
intention of God—and possibly his good legs stood him 
well. Anyhow, he escaped sorceries and magic and 
many unknown horrors, and recounted his adventures 
to the wide-eyed monks on the Lerins. Can you see 
this—^the beautiful yoimg man who but for a miracle 
might have been lost for ever, and the horrified inter- 


48 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


ested Brothers listening—^all ears—^to other mysteries 
than their’s. The abbot was dreadfully shocked: 
worse than pagan virgins this, much worse ! Worship¬ 
ping a great goat indeed ! . . . And he raised such a 
storm of indignation that the mount was attacked, and 
every tree burnt to the ground. The altar was smashed 
to atoms and the chapel dedicated to St. Etienne—^first 
martyr. 

The Sainted Abbot once more called upon the holy 
women—^rich ones—and Dame Helene, Princess de 
Rietz, built a new convent. And immediately they 
made a new saint and sanctified her in the new convent 
—Sainte Maxime of Grasse. And she in turn moved 
on, into the Var towards the mountains named Les 
Maures because they are dark hills, and the little lovely 
port opposite St. Tropeze, on the edge of its waters, 
is named after her. 

But sad to say, when in the year 677 Saint Agulphe 
came with new energy and reforms to the Lerins, nothing 
but ruins and desertion remained of this turbulent 
convent. The curse of Venus made all very disturbed 
and unsettled and black magic has a direful influence. 
Once more the abbe rebuilt the Holy Place and incredible 
but true, noble ladies endowed it. A colony of mms 
from Blois, headed by Sainte Agadreme (Angradreme) 
or Angarisma, descended and inhabited it, in spite 
of its history. Then these noble virgins under Angarisma 
took ship to Sardinia as a sort of modernized voyage of 
St. Ursula—and brought back in triumph the precious 
relics of some murdered Lerins monks. But who knows 
this was not some of the black magic of Venus or Cloaster 


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ST. CASSIEN 49 

poisoning their minds, making them seek unholy 
adventure ? 

Then was peace, but it was not for long. Suddenly 
vengeance once more,—^this in the year 730, from the 
hands of the Saracens; and, says the old chronicle, 
these barbarians—“ saccag^rent Cannes, Arluc, et toute 
la contree.” But with true Christian spirit the convent 
arose—^this religion that throve on oppression—^this 
convent of perpetual oppression ! In 964 we hear of it 
as a convent under the mother convent of Arles. In 979 
the Pope Benoit VII. confided the Arluc convent to 
the Abbot of Cluny. Once more, the Saracens, established 
at Fraxinet, overran the country, burning and pillaging, 
and once more and for the last time, the virgins of 
Arluc fled before the invaders. Nothing is ever heard 
from that day to this of the Sacred Convent of the Sacred 
Wood. And who shall say wherein lies the moral of 
this history, glowing and vibrant as the atmosphere 
under the cypress trees that to-day surround Venus’s 
altar. For the same reason, the Lerins named it later 
St. Cassien, probably after the founder of the celebrated 
monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles. 

But listen! Every year, on the 23rd of July, the 
inhabitants of Cannes encamp all night and all day on 
the sacred mount, and there are dances and songs and 
drinking and loving enough to do honour to any pagan 
goddess. From time immemorial this has been done. 
And what moral will you draw, or what think ? Venus 
Immortalis! St. Jin-Jin! Carnival! these are the 
gods of these people. 

During the days of the Revolution the state offered 
D 


50 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


the chapel of St. Cassien for sale. A member of the 
district of Grasse and two hundred soldiers went to 
take over the chapel and its belongings. They were 
met on their way by all the furious people of Cannes, 
men and women, armed and on the plain below. 
The two hundred soldiers and their commander turned 
and retired to Grasse whence they had come. And 
into Cannes and up to the safe keeping of the Suquet 
Chmch the crowd carried the relics and the treasure of 
the Chapel of Arluc. Nine inhabitants of Cannes 
combined and bought the ground for two thousand and 
five hundred francs, and consented to divide the property 
with other Cannois. A sort of syndicate was formed to 
keep the chapel in repair and protect the rows and 
avenues of cypress trees. 

Be alone or with one other, on a day when the trap¬ 
door spiders run gently over the ivy on the steep slopes ; 
when the meadows towards the sea are softly green, 
covering the ruins of Arluc town ; when the nightingales 
sing in the sunlight and the moonlight. Be gentle 
with the ghosts who flit between the long shadows, the 
white fleeing vestals, the white fleeing nuns; and arm 
yourselves with love against the evil that lurks behind 
the old walls and in the midst of the thick wood. 


THE LERINS ISLANDS AND 
THE MONASTERY OF ST. 
HONORAT 


t 




THE LfiRINS ISLANDS AND THE MONASTERY 
OF ST. HONORAT 


T he Christian story of these two islands, starts 
with a myth and ends in a dream, and I have 
used the dream as a prologue to this book. 
These two little islands still hold power but not the 
far-reaching, spiritual and rehgious power of the past 
centuries ; for with the birth of the power of the Lerins 
grew the importance of the country of the Litoral. The 
myth is a Christian legend and based on a Provencal 
habit—^that of chatting, interminable conversation con¬ 
tinually going on between St. Honorat, the first Abbot, 
and his sister St. Marguerite. She in her cell and he in 
his cell, on either side of the Island which was then not 
divided. Providence and a jealous God thought this 
was not all in favour of a strict attention to saint life 
and duties, so the sea was allowed to separate the brother 
and sister. But once a year “ when the cherry-trees 
blossomed ” they were allowed to meet and hold sweet 
conversation. 

And from here started the political and romantic 
life of Les Lerins which centred in the island of St. 
Honorat. But the real, civic geographical life of 
53 


54 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


the Lerins “ had been ” ; had been, in the days before 
Augustus Caesar. St. Marguerite was the Island of L6to, 
the Ligurian pirate chief; it was the Georgoan of the 
Greeks, when St. Honorat was called by them Lerina 
or Planasia. According to Strabo and Pliny the elder, 
and others, the Islands were extensively inhabited by 
Greeks and Romans, and the narrow water now called 
“ Le Frivoul ” divided them. Pliny speaks of big harbour 
works and a port and several towns of importance on 
St. Marguerite. Certain that the Monastery on St. 
Honorat was founded in the midst of Greek and Roman 
remains in 375 and was, during the succeeding years of 
its growing importance to supply Bishops for nearly all 
the sees in Gaul. 

And here I must tell the story of St. Honorat and 
his holy guide, Caprais, who under the shadow of 
St. Leonce, Bishop of Frejus, lived in complete solitude 
and contemplation in the grottos of the Esterel 
moimtains, mainly in those of St. Martholemy over 
Frejus. As the ideals of solitude demand greater 
needs and sacrifice, and the eyes of St. Honorat had 
always before them the cerulean vision of two islands 
floating in the sea below him, he asked leave of Leonce 
to instal himself and his saintly guide and comforter 
on the lonely island; for he felt mountain peaks were 
mainly accessible, but an island was a defence made by 
Providence for the elect few who sought peace and 
undisturbed meditations in what was then a very dis¬ 
turbed world. A world where those who could not 
fight were killed, where those who would not toil died of 
hunger; Elijah’s ravens existed for the Holy and 


THE LERINS ISLANDS 


55 


retiring few. Let us praise heaven for those quiet 
wiser men who took the pen with them into their 
monastic cells where they scratched the doings, or 
rather the rumours, of the world’s doings, and painted 
each letter of their MSS. as gorgeous as a Southern 
sunset for the glory of God. Let us dwell romantically 
upon these monks, putting aside the remarkable works 
of Mr. Lecky and and Mr. Gibbon, who would suggest 
that the idle in this calling here found their Paradise, 
that the poor there became as the rich, that the ignorant 
aped the wise, that the cowards here hid from the 
brave, and so on. 

The presence of St. Honorat soon bathed the atmos¬ 
phere with holiness and quickly spread the news of his 
arrival to the ears of his less happy brothers. In little 
boats they rowed to his island, escaping from grave 
dangers and overcoming many difficulties. Soon there 
was a great company, sufficient to found a perfectly 
good monastery. At the death of St. Honorat another 
Saint took his place as Abbot, and so on through those 
ruthless centuries. The monastery had also its moral 
set-backs, naturally. A Grimaldi Bishop of Grasse 
asked Monte Cassino, the Monastery near Naples, 
famous for its discipline and its library, to undertake 
to re-establish on the Lerins the rigour and purity of 
the order of St. Benoit. But that was in the 19th 
century when few monasteries escaped the temper of 
an age which inspired Les Contes Drolatiques and 
drove Don Quichote to tilt at wind-mills. But it is in 
its earlier days that the true Christian spirit, the Th6baide 
spirit, overflows in the blood of martyrs. Old chron- 


56 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


ides, given to exaggeration when enthusiasm takes a 
part, speak of three thousand monks belonging to the 
community. This meant an over-flow into the neigh¬ 
bouring Island of St. Marguerite, where in the sweet- 
scented shade of her low, bent pines sweeping the water, 
St. Vincent composed his famous “ Commonitoire ” in 
434; he formulated the devastating law of his creed, 
the bed-rock of faith, the strongest defence faith has 
against her only enemy, education, or intelligence. 
“ Croire sans discussion sans aucune examin du fond 
de la doctrine Believe and never ask questions. In 
fact, leave some of that pagan mystery which clings to 
the aesthetic in all religions. Great old cute men! 
There is another famous Abbot, one of those who 
succeeded St. Honorat, St. Loup. He had doings with 
Attila, the mighty Hun. Attila was cute too, he knew 
how they argued, how disease, misfortune, etc., were 
preached as God’s will to bring sinners to repentance on 
a decent endorsement. “I am the Scourge of God,” 
shouted Attila. “ Do not then,” replied St. Loup, 
“ do ought but obey your Master.” The conversation 
then dispensed with the interpreter. 

Followed the dreadful days of the Saracen 
Invaders. In the 8th century five hundred monks of 
Les Lerins found their crowns on a lovely summer 
evening in the year 730. A monk named Barrahs has 
left very “ important and very authentic ” documents 
on the subjeet. He tells how the Abbot, St. Porcaire, 
some days before, being warned by God in a dream, 
assembled his “ sheep ” and proceeded to tell them that 
soon they might be called upon to fulfil one of their 



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THE LERINS ISLANDS 


57 


vows and to embrace martyrdom. The treasure was 
buried, and thirteen children together with thirty-six 
young men were sent to the Italian coast. “ And,” 
added the Abbot, “ any brother who suffers fear may 
accompany them.” The 500 monks desired to remain, 
all except two, Columbus and Eleuthere, who promptly 
hid in a grotto on the roek, called to this day “ Bauno 
di San Souvador.” The fatal evening opened in a coral 
sunset. Saracens armed with scimitar and with flashing 
pointed helmets, black slaves in turban leading the 
white Arab horses and others leading slow-blooded camels 
flooded into the little saintly island. The scene of burning, 
destruction and slaughter went on rapidly. The young 
monk, Columbus, in his grotto could bear it no longer. 
He rushed out and joined the martyrs. The young 
men were killed and the old tortured; only, says, 
brother Barralis, four strong young monks “ of beautiful 
body ” were kept and taken on board the ship of the 
Commander. The abbey was looted, the cloister “ with 
marvellously wrought ” pillars broken and thrown, with 
all other objects of beauty or holiness, into the sea. 

When night fell and the Saracens left for the shore of 
Agay, poor, trembling, conscience-smitten Eleuthere 
crept out of his hiding place and found a little bark to 
take him to Italy, where he became a Saint on earth, and 
later returned to the island and rebuilt the monastery 
in the days when Pepin was acclaimed “ King of the 
Franks and the Country of the Romans.” 

The memorial of those days remains—their monument 
remains. The golden, ruined, cloistered tower which 
seems to lie like a wrecked ship in full sail in the trans- 


58 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


lucent water below its stone walls; like white wine 
poured over golden brown mud, the shallow water hes 
around the tower of the ruined “ chateau fort ” of the 
old monastery. 

Then followed the days of gratitude, for the island 
during succeeding centmies became not only a strong¬ 
hold of faith, but also a sanctuary and sometimes a 
stronghold of personal safety. 

They had done very well, these saintly Abbots, in 
acquiring land, and with their “ rights of way and fishing, 
of dime, of harvest, wreckage, etc. they did amazingly 
well. Christianity was at flood-tide. The monks were 
saints and martyrs—^these had lived silently (with I 
suspect, gentle insistent propaganda)—saintly souls, who 
predicted the miseries of devastation and conquest as a 
just punishment to the wieked who dwelt so unsafely 
and uncomfortably on the mainland. 

These predictions culminated in the ghastly stagnant 
brooding year of 999 the year of the Last Day! The 
Last Day which the godly had foretold in every chapel, 
in every church and in castle and at every crossroad. 

Only too willing to believe anything, almost willing 
to accept an unknown end with relief, the tired fearful 
people, the high and low in the land, sat and waited. 
No corn was planted, no olives collected, no wine made. 
The common people made their “ soupe ” in silence, 
while the rich wrote, in shocking Provencal Latin, new 
wills, testaments, and deeds giving their castles, lands, 
farms and rights, and sometimes their sons, to the 
Monastery of St. Honorat. 

Perhaps they believed their sacrifices or the prayers 


THE LERINS ISLANDS 


59 


of the saints worked the miracle that prevented the 
Last Da>. For at the end of that year, in a bitter cold 
mistral, old year’s night was passed by huddled silent 
people in the churches, and to everyone’s surprise the 
year 1000 dawned clear and crisp with the first Mimosas 
and the Promise of the “ Moyen Age.” 

Then follows the stagic 15th century, painted in strong 
deep colours—a history of galleons and golden sails, red 
love ribbons ,—a glint of armour under a lace collar. 

In 1400 the Genoese captured the island and burnt it. 

In 1525, the island had been held by the Spaniards 
for two years, when Francis I. of France, a prisoner 
after Pavia, on his way to Spain, passed a night in the 
Monastery, the night of the 21st of June, leaving as a 
souvenir a very lovely embossed and wrought chest, 
wherein were placed the treasured relics of the body of 
St. Honorat, distributed later at the time of the Revolu¬ 
tion to surrounding parishes. This happened in 1788 
after the Monastery had fallen into very low water. 
Only seven just monks remained, living peaceably in 
the large deserted cloisters. The Revolutionary agents 
took everything, but gave to each of the seven—les sept 
parmis les hommes—1,500 pounds pension apiece; the 
furniture and the wonderful library of the monastery 
were divided between them. The sacred relics were 
also divided—but among the churches : 

To Cannes went the chest of Fran 9 ois I: 

To Grasse the head of St. Honorat: 

To Mougins an arm : 

To the Cannet an arm : 

To Auribeau the jaw. 


60 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Poor dissipated Honorat! It makes one a little 
nervous about the last day of Judgment and Resurrec¬ 
tion. 

But even then, after the escape from the dreaded 
999, the Population did not relax their efforts, and the 
Monastery found itself with dozens of “ maas ” (a farm 
of 15 hectars) to be worked by brothers and those monks 
in need of change of air. The Abbey became a com¬ 
mercial concern in real estate. In 1050 Guillaume of 
Mougins and his wife Fida gave everything they pos¬ 
sessed to the Abbey. In 1070, thanks to the Berangers, 
Grimaldis, Asnolf de Biot, De Grasse and others, the 
great fortified tower on St. Honorat was built, and con¬ 
fidence grew. Throughout the middle ages there was 
a short breathing space until the Spaniards arrived— 
and this is for the history of St. Marguerite and has 
nothing to do with the Abbey. And then came the 
Revolution which was once more to give back to the 
common people the lands so long held by the Abbey. 

Now comes a strange vicissitude. 

The land of St. Honorat was sold to a lady—an 
actress—^Mademoiselle de Sainval of the Comedie 
Fran 9 aise, who was born at St. Paul du Var, that 
superb, little, walled hill-town near Vence. Her real 
name was Marie Blanche Alziary de Roquefort. Sick 
and tired of the jealousies, intrigues, strivings and 
arrivings of the French stage world, she bought St. 
Honorat and lived there like a philosophic dethroned 
queen, in the west side of the Monastery building. 

There is a pretty turn of the tide. 

Then the actress died. 


THE LERINS ISLANDS 


61 


How much prayer and what oceans of all the blessed 
sprinkled waters must have gone to the cleansing of the 
holy ground, which passed into the hands of a heretic 
on the death of the actress, the heretic hands of an 
Anglican minister! But even Mr. Sims died, and his 
heirs put St. Honorat up for sale. Sold by the next 
owner. Monsieur Sicard, the Church once more acquired 
its lost possessions. 





THE SAGA OF STE 
MARGUERITE 



VI 

THE SAGA OF STE. MARGUERITE 


T he giving, graceful pines of the Island, called 
Ste. Marguerite, were not planted more than 
a hundred years ago; but, even denuded of 
these, her special ornament and almost her only 
inhabitants, it is difficult to imagine how the island 
in the 17th century was the scene of spectacular battles 
between the French and the Spaniards. Battles of 
grand Seigneurs! Forts at every possible place! 
Infantry entrenchments ! Cavalry charges. 

This all happened in 1635. On the 13th of September, 
twenty-two Spanish galleys sailing from Naples hovered 
around the island. The Commander of the Fort on Ste. 
Marguerite, Jean de Benevent, Sieur de Marignac, 
dispatched a swimmer to the Fort of the Croisette, 
asking the Fort Commander, Chasteuil, for help. 
Chasteuil sent back his reply by the same swimming 
messenger, to the effect that next night the island 
commander would have men and munitions. 

On their way, these troops, being then about a mile 
from the mainland, again encountered this hardy 
swimmer, but this time to say the Fort had capitulated. 
The Spaniards then attacked the Croisette, vainly. 
They then firmly, and with many new forts, established 
E 65 


66 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


themselves on the island. The French under d’Harcourt 
in the following year, 1636, in the middle of August, with 
many galleons, sailed to retrieve the lost possession. 
Was it the blue sky, the delectable summer nights under 
the Suquet towers, the safe and entrancing beauty of 
Villefranche harbour and Golfe Jouan, that drew them ? 
Possibly. But Ste. Marguerite remained quietly in 
Spanish hands. The King wrote furiously, through 
Desnoyers that if in eight days after the receipt of the 
letter that part of the French possessions was still in 
enemy hands, other “ esprits,” more prompt and better 
disposed to the undertaking, would be permitted to 
proceed. 

The letter raised a dreadful scandal—and a scene. 
The two French commanders lost their tempers, and the 
Marechal de Vitry beat with his stick the Archbishop 
of Bordeaux over the head. They blamed each other 
for the delay, instead of blaming the Midi and its lure. 
Both gentlemen were forced to retire to their own homes 
for a short time. But soon, with ships, men, many 
gentlemen of Provence and long ladders to scale the 
cliffs, the French attacked: after some weeks of siege 
a truce was signed in May, 1637. I find in this curious 
document of the Truce Conditions mention of a fountain 
on the island. Now, all the water is either conserved 
from the roofs, etc., or else brought from the mainland. 
Here are the words of the treaty : “ et lorsque celle de 
la place manquera, les assieges en pourront venir boire 
a la fontaine, qui est sous leur entranchements.” Has 
this fountain spring dried up ? St Honorat we know 
has always had wells. 


SAGA OF STE. MARGUERITE 67 


At the expiration of the armistice, the Spanish Captain 
surrendered. A wonderful 17th century surrender— 
Chapeaux has and tambours, flags unfurled; nine 
hundred men marched out from the Fort Royal, cavalry 
and infantry; Don Miguel Perez the last to follow, 
accompanied by fifty-four mounted guards. Arrived in 
the middle of the island, where Don Perez dismounted, 
facing the Comte d’Harcourt, the Archbishop, the Comte 
de Carces and many other gentlemen, they embraeed 
and made lovely speeches to each other, dignified 
speeches of congratulation and capitulation; the bells 
of Cannes rang, the people danced the forbidden 
Rigaudin, and the great Louis wrote a condescending 
letter full of very gracious thanks for the “ glorious ” 
success of his “ vigorous, generous ” gentlemen. 

The story of the Man in the Iron Mask has through 
familiarity almost become unknown. One has heard 
always of this mysterious “ mask ” and one forgets the 
dramatic, terrible, incomprehensible story which was 
enacted in the island of Ste. Marguerite, in the Vauban 
fortress built on the remains of the rowing school for 
Roman boatmen.* In the days when even an en¬ 
lightened and unfettered queen of Sweden got rid of a 
courtier by the simple method of murder in some one 
else’s palace, when oubliettes were still in fashion, and 

* “ Utriculares ” these boatmen were called. Their barques were 
mainly wine sacks, filled with straw or blown out, placed between 
planks, with additional planks over them to form a seat. Possibly, 
the whole structure was covered by skins sewn together, somewhat 
like a Canadian canoe. Their lightness made them of great use in 
navigating rivers and still waters. 


68 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


even poison not yet relegated to the dark ages, one 
wonders if anyone but a political hostage could have 
been held so uncomfortably tormented and imprisoned 
as this mysterious Masque de Fer. The masque 
happened to be of velvet with a chin piece flexible to 
enable the prisoner to eat. Why he did not tear it off is a 
further mystery, for life could have held little encourage¬ 
ment. Yet, there is a square of blue seen through that 
barred window, of so wonderful a blue, that—^who 
knows—perhaps he looked and looked again, and each 
day was a square of blue. 

It was in the reign of Louis XIV. that this graceful, 
well-made, male creature was brought to the island in 
charge of Le Marquis de St. Mars, who himself waited 
on the tall figure whose face was covered in a velvet 
mask. The prisoner was always beautifully dressed 
and deferentially treated, and a few stories leaked out of 
the Vauban fortress and made the people of the island 
and Cannes “ curioser and curioser.” So much so, and 
hedged by so much romance was the story, that when 
the Governor sought for 8 female companion for the 
prisoner, a beautiful woman from Mougins was chosen 
from among many aspirants. Some old papers, 
especially those of the Lerins, go on to say that when 
she heard she should never return to the mainland, or 
indeed, see another soul all her days, the lady of Mougins 
retired, daunted. 

The prisoner’s cell is to-day very much as it was, with 
its three times barred window and its trap hole to the 
sea ; through this hole one day he pushed a small silver 
salver, and God knows what he had scratched all over it. 


SAGA OF STE. MARGUERITE 69 


Only St. Mars knew, for it fell into shallow sea, and a 
fisherman saw it glisten and took it to St. Mars. “ Can 
you read ? ” said the Governor. “ Unfortunately, no,” 
replied he of the sea. “ Fortunately, no,” said St. Mars, 
“ or you would have fished to-day for the last time.” 
Then they trebled the window bars. But the Masque 
de Velours, not daunted, took a fine cambric, frilled, 
and laced shirt and smoothed out its myriad folds, and 
wrote thereon and therein and repleated the folds. This 
was so small, it passed through the narrow bits of blue 
between the window bars and fell on the rocks below, 
caught on the spike of an aloe, and fluttered like a flag. 
A soldier rescued it and took it to the Governor. But, 
poor wretch, he was unable to persuade St. Mars he 
could not read, for he died that night. In future, St. 
Mars himself superintended all the prisoner’s laundry. 

Legends grow out of all importance we know, but the 
few stories of the prisoner seem not to have varied 
through the centuries. Another one, and this again 
had almost a fatal termination. St. Mars had a friend 
whose son, not being well, was sent south to the sun and 
to the household care of St. Mars. The boy wandered 
along the vaulted narrow corridor and arrived near the 
open cell door of the prisoner. St. Mars was taking him 
food and holding conversation with the masque, saw 
the boy approach, banged the door, and taking the young 
man by the arm, marched him out into the big 
garden. But next day he left for home, and in a 
letter of apology to the father for failing to keep his son 
as his visitor, the Prison Governor wrote that he feared 
too much the inevitable consequences if such an accident 


70 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


was repeated,—“ for I have orders to kill anyone who 
discovers aught of my prisoner.” Not a pretty task 
for Saint Mars. One wonders why he did it and for so 
many years. He arrived withhis prisoner from Perpig- 
nol in 1687 and left with his prisoner, to become Gover¬ 
nor of La Bastille, in 1698. In prison, the mysterious 
one was treated by the old prison doctor. “ He exam¬ 
ined his tongue and his body but never saw his face, 
and was entranced by his voice which was full of grati¬ 
tude and no complaints.” 

This creature died in 1703. When he was buried, it 
was found that his head had been severed from his body. 
That is one story; the other is that the prisoner died 
on the island and was buried there. Such a fuss ! 
There must have been some pretty good reason; a 
pretty good reason for not finding out the reason. 
Some say, and here history would appear to be recon¬ 
ciled if one can imagine the importance of the situation, 
that the prisoner was the twin brother of the King, 
possibly the eldest, for he that is born last is gyneco- 
logically the eldest. Why his existence should have 
been feared to such an extent it is hard to surmise, and 
therefore this reason does not seem sufficient. In 1789, 
Grimm writes that “ Monsieur de Laborde, ancient 
valet de chambre ” of the King, found among the papers 
of the Marechal de Richelieu a letter written by the 
Duchess of Modena, who was daughter of the Regent. 
The letter was to her lover, and began in code and 
appeared therefore to be of great importance. “Here 
at last is the famous secret! It has cost me very dear, 
but I have succeeded . . . The Queen gave birth just 


SAGA OF STE. MARGUERITE 71 

as the King was going in to dinner—^to a son. The 
usual fuss and ceremony. Four hoars later, Madame 
Perronet, midwife to the Queen, interrupted the King 
while he was eating—^the Queen’s pains were once 
more upon her! A second son was born, a far more 
beautiful child and much stronger and bigger than the 
first. The birth papers were attested and signed by 
the King, the Chancellor, Madame Perronet, the 
Doctor and a gentleman who became later, the gaoler 
of the “ Masque de fer ”—St. Mars in fact. 

If this letter actually existed, it sounds very feasible 
that the Queen should have given birth to twins, but 
that the one should have been such a danger as to 
justify perpetual imprisonment appears ridiculous. The 
secret apparently was supposed to be passed on from 
one heir to the throne to another. Louis XV, Louis XVI 
knew it, up to the father of Louis Philippe. This is 
authentic and proved, also the reply of the Regent 
when questioned—“ le personnage was of no impor¬ 
tance ”—^which, say the chronicles, he said because he 
knew’ it was true, or because he regarded it as of no 
consequence. Anyhow, it is a good story ; one of those 
that leave an atmosphere, as we found while awaiting 
a good dinner at the island restaurant. The old guardian 
with clanking key and the usual rheumatic legs took 
us into the prison through the “ Grand Jardin,” past 
the well of the Spaniards and the little gate which leads 
to the woods, through which stout Bazaine pushed 
himself in his flight. This Marechal w’as the last political 
prisoner on the Island. The old keeper had been part 
of the prison household in 1870. He took us to the 


72 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


ramparts near Bazaine’s quarters, from which a rope 
had been hung to give the illusion that stout Bazaine 
had gone over the side. But it was through the forest 
gate, explained the guardian, which had been left open 
by the Captain of the Garde. “ Madame—he, this 
Captain, who was afterwards directeur of the X hotel 
in Cannes ... he had his orders, no doubt.” Probably 
he had, and probably the Spanish ship, lying off Golfe 
Jouan, which proceeded to Genoa, also had its orders, 
for was not MacMahon first President of the French 
Republic ! 

The right and wrongs, understandings and mis¬ 
understandings of the Bazaine story are too much of 
modern history to have reached the period of familiarity. 
Modern History has hardly yet escaped from the feuille- 
tons of the Memories, Letters and “ I remembers ” of 
our fathers and grandfathers; it is still a question of 
dragons in shallow waters, of family skeletons kept in 
cupboards. So Marina thinks that the sojourn in exile 
in the Ste. Marguerite fortress of Bazaine, Marechal of 
France, is worth a few lines of remembrance. 

The Empress Eugenie, the Catholic party and some 
others went to war with Prussia. A very bad idea, 
thrust upon them as we have found out. Even then 
it was found to be an undertaking for which France was 
quite unprepared and which resulted in making Germany 
into a Nation. Bazaine, and an army of about a 
150,000 men, was surrounded and besieged in Metz; 
instead of attempting a sortie to relieve Paris, he sur¬ 
rendered his entire army, baggage and arms, after 
“ ignoble ” pourparlers. France was furious and hurt. 


SAGA OF STE. MARGUERITE 73 


and Bazaine was court martialled and saved! Saved 
conveniently— o. dead man may more easily become a 
Hero or a Saint than a living man: also a living man 
makes a good whipping-boy; and a scape-goat, caught 
in a good thicket with bars round it so that people may 
see and watch its torments, is an everlasting monument 
to prejudice and tradition. 





A WALK FROM LA ROQUETTE 



r 



VII 

A WALK FROM LA ROQUETTE 


W OULD you walk in the shades to-day or would 
you join us, Marina, a Garde Charnpetre 
and a gentleman from Mougins, a landed 
proprietor, and figuring in the papers of Nice, in police- 
cases of motor-car accidents or attempted murders, as 
“ un brave cultivateur ” ? He is one of those happy 
Frenchmen who pay no taxes, who grow ohves and make 
wine, who drive their mule-cart on the wrong side of the 
road in the dusk, having no lights, without danger of con¬ 
travention. He is at once the back-bone and the key 
to Southern France. He has inherited twenty-five 
different small holdings from his ancestors and relatives 
dating from the Revolution; these are scattered all 
over the country-side, and a great deal of his life is spent 
in wearily tramping from one property to another, 
doing a small amount of labour and collecting the 
various recoltes. To-day he is going to “ view ” one 
of those little properties which may have suffered in 
the great fires of last summer. He has not been able 
to inspect them since the fire of some weeks ago. The 
garde charnpetre or rural guard, who has been a hair¬ 
dresser in a former cycle of his life, is coming with us 
77 


78 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


for company. He loves a chat, and his work may lead 
him just as well to the Quartier St. Jean as to anywhere 
else. He carries always with him a smallish, black bag, 
which we suspect contains not only a good bottle of 
vieux marc brandy, but also the implements of his late 
trade. One always remarks that there is a distinct 
lack of seven-days-beard on the inhabitants of the fields 
and cottages after the passage of the garde champetre. 
The Southern French in this resemble the Italians ; 
they prefer to be shaved in style ; it is a sacre, a cere¬ 
mony : on these occasions healths are drunk, amusing 
converse indulged in, occasions for wit and sallies— 
galeja. We three met while drinking beer in the cafe 
at the village of La Roquette. Marina, being in their 
eyes Russian or English, and an 5 ^how mad, may drink 
beer in cafes : women who wear breeches and garters 
and tie up their heads in handkerchiefs like any poor 
creature cannot be regarded as just women. “ How 
far to the old chapel of St. Jean,” I said, after I’d paid 
for the drinks. “ The chapel through the forest ? ” 
the guard lifted his dark eyebrows—“ Madame is never 
going there now! ” It is almost sunset. Have I the 
honour to offer Madame a little refreshment ? . . . 
The chapel is far from here and along the worst road 
on earth,” said he of Mougins, “ but I go that way to 
see a property I have in that direction. It is close to 
some ground which a neighbour was digging the other 
day and they tell me he has found some cimous coffin 
which contains bodies and golden vases ... a pure 
gold medal too of Roman days.” 

There! No where, no how, can one, escape these 


A WALK FROM LA ROQUETTE79 


Shades. How could one resist such a temptation ? 
The old chapel of the Capucines, who had owned the 
original farm of La Roquette and a Roman tomb ! 
“We take the old Road from La Roquette through 
the cork tree forest,” said he of Mougins. 

Taking the high road from the village with our faces 
to the sea, we turned off to the right about half a mile 
from the Cafe. Here the road or track cut through a 
plantation of pink May roses on the right, and led 
apparently through steep, wooded hills to the planes of 
Laval. These hills might indeed be called the “ avant- 
garde ” of the Esterel. These hills loomed before us out 
of a blue mist of a May evening. A forest of pines on 
the left. Bracken and fern and a stream edged the track, 
which followed the narrow defile through the rocky 
hills; the sweet scent of alpine roses and broom per¬ 
vaded the air. What more marvellous scent than the 
alpine rose or cyst ? Especially in late afternoon when 
the flowers of one day’s duration fall. White and rose 
pink ! 

Suddenly we were in the region of the great fires of 
last summer; the half peeled cork-trees bearing only 
small tufts of new leaves. I was in ecstatic admiration ; 
the perfection of landscape, was lost upon my compan¬ 
ions. They were deep in reminiscences of the fires for 
which the district of La Roquette is famous. 

“ Yes, yes,” grumbled the garde champetre, “ those 
fires were as persistent as the evil doings of the Brigands 
of Pegomas—a one man show too. Ah, when I think 
of all those shootings, and murders, and robberies; all 
one man, and he not all there, so they say.” 


80 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


He of Mougins: “ Vouie, vouie, but they also say, 
chez nous, your Brigands were not quite so stupid; 
there was some one or a few people who had a grudge 
against new folk,—estrangers—invading their village, 
those Macaronis who flood down from the mountains 
into and over our hills, who will live on the smell of a 
tomato and yet who dig as well as we—^it frightened 
them—^all this lawlessness ... it put them off! There 
are no new Italian families making risottos in the 
Pegomas valley.” 

Marina: “ But do they know who set fire to these 
lovely w^oods ? ” 

Guide : “ Vouie, vouie, Madame.” 

Marina : “ Well I hope he has been punished.” 

He of Mougins: “ But we know him well. He is 
quite ‘ un bon type.’ Only during summer, he seems 
to go—drole—toc-toc . . . not quite right in his head, 
and he fires the woods. But they are going to shut him 
up a little during the great heat. (On va lui renfermer 
un peu pendant la grande secheresse! ”) 

What a people. Think of last summer! Acres and 
acres of exquisite forest land! Blazing, crackling, 
tumbling, spreading. That night in August! There 
was a gentle “ mistral ” blowing and all day we watched 
a tower of smoke soaring and billowing to heaven. And 
in the afternoon, with naked eyes, we could see on the 
steep slopes of la Roquette long lines of flame and little 
forms in white rushing hither and thither, lighting the 
“ contre-teu.” And the pillar of smoke spread into 
vast proportions. A world of golden smoke and blaze 
in a golden sunset. 


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A WALK FROM LA ROQUETTE 81 


Then the tocsin rang, all the Roquette bells—S.O.S. 
bells—^we panted up the Roquette hill through the 
darkening wood-side in the direction of the smoke— 
soon to be led by the sound of the crackling pine-trees. 
The sky, dull, dead-blue. The earth in darkness. 
Forms loomed and moved between hght and darkness. 
And ominous sounds coming from the forest. The 
chatter of patois from a group who were arranging a 
counter-fire, under an olive tree the whining of a horse 
held by a soldier, a black man from the Grasse garrison. 
Orders, yelled from out of a livid red glow. And little 
men, little, yelling, jumping men, silhouetted against 
the glowing mass before us ! The Grasse Anamites 
fighting the flames . . . loathing it. . . . The peasants 
stood massed, watching: the proportions the fire had 
taken made their help useless. They watched for stray 
sparks to be beaten out, and talked quietly among 
themselves. The village was almost surrounded. The 
priest was sajdng “ Aves ” busily, before the altar of the 
Capucines’ Chapel. The Mayor, more at home in 
Provencal, was endeavouring to keep up a polite con¬ 
versation with me. The yells of the Anamites increased 
and added to the tremendous scene. The counter-fire 
was lit before our eyes and like a wild thing let loose, 
leapt out towards the conflagration beyond. The entire 
world between La Rouquette, Mouans and Pegomas in 
the distant valley was ablaze. The edges of the fire 
saw strange things—the sizzling of a wave of fire over the 
reeds in a water dyke. A pine tree like a Christmas tree, 
fresh lit, with candles, only the cones alight. Then 
hundreds of pine trees with only their cones ahght. 

F 


82 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Fairy vision. Theyblazed and died. But below, dread¬ 
ful, enveloping tongues, loose, mad, wild tongues of 
fire always dancing and leaping towards the trees. It 
was like a baUet; single bursts of flame, a sort of eddy: 
action: form : convulsion: singly and then expanding, 
the mass suddenly raced towards another mass of convolu- 
ting fire, joined and joined again in a long leaping chain 
encircling the trees. Especially dreadful, some straight 
magnificent firs, like tall Brunhildes gathered bravely 
on a small forest mound—defiant. And now the fire 
surrounded and crept towards them; inevitable end. 
Slowly it embraced the stems in torturing heat which, 
suddenly, is too great, and with a mighty blaze the tree 
leaps into the blue heaven—ablaze from head to foot— 
high, it shoots up, still straight and tall, and falls out of 
our sight, into a vast pit of haze and glare. One after 
another they fall into the background of static heat. 
Almost solid this dreadful formless mass of heat. 

The village is saved, but an officer rides out from the 
haze and tells the Mayor that the blazing will continue 
through the forest. Nothing can stop it unless the wind 
changes. There are fifteen miles of fire. 

So we sit through the night, until the wind changes 
about four o’clock and walk home through jasmine 
plantations; we see their starry white flowers, but not 
a breath comes of their heavy white fragrance. The 
smell of fire is over all our world. But the clean dawn 
comes flying up from Italy. 

Next day and for three or four days, the fire broke 
loose again—and again the tired peasants and the 
garrison fought it and won. 


A WALK FROM LA ROQUETTE83 


And all that is done to avenge this distraction and 
desolation, is, “ Nous allons lui renfermer un peu, 
pendant la grande secheresse.” 

And this is my soliloquy as we walk out of the cork 
forest through small low plantations of early pink May 
roses which the peasants are busily gathering. 

In this manner we came upon a new vineyard, and, 
on a higher level lying among scrub, piles of charred, 
white, brittle bones and broken bits of pottery. Some 
peasants who had obviously been digging were now 
gathered together in groups, talking, and talking, and 
talking—everyone talked. In their midst were the 
spoiled remains of two coffins made of the baked clay 
used for the Biot and Vallauris Jarres. These were 
ornamented with moulded circles. A small girl, seeing 
us, screamed, “ Ah ! there are vases inside,” and where 
the clay, coffin-tiled lid had been broken off, she plunged 
in her hand. Out came a skull! No vase—a skull. 
Everyone screamed, and the brittle firebaked Yorrick 
crumbled among the low, brown orchids and grasses. 
“ But last week there were vases,” the child cried, “ I 
saw them glisten, and there are golden flowers in them, 
and in one a golden medal with writing on it.” And so 
on. An old woman whispered, “Yes, she is right. La 
petite-er, there were vases and a gold medal . . . the 
peasants shut them up in that little cabin there . . • 
and now they say that they have been stolen . . . that 
is because the ‘ savants ’ came from Grasse, from the 
Musee, to perhaps take them away. The peasants will 
sell them themselves. But don’t say anything of 
this.” 


84 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


By this time everyone was saying something—saying 
a great deal—all at the same time, as the Provencal 
does, and there was no sense to be made out of their 
tales. I wandered away from the group and picked up 
some pieces of the broken coffins and some of the bones 
which I placed in a heap—there in the high field where 
their bodies and souls lived, for they were not very 
important Romans, these.* Possibly keepers of one of 
the post-houses along the Roman road to Horrhea. The 
bones were those of a man and a woman; one of the 
lady’s teeth was stopped—with gold. She had found 
this consolation perhaps at Antipolis or more probably 
at the important town of Ceremelum or Cimiez. She 
now lay in my two hands—her stopped tooth, the 
most important part of her ! 

Those wonderful post-houses; always placed just 
at a few miles distance along those perfect roads, 
where fresh hoises were always awaiting the hurried 
traveller, who was thus enabled to cover one hundred 
miles a day. The records tell me that a traveller 
along the main Roman roads could average 100 miles 
a day. 

I looked back to the vineyard for my companions. 
They had disappeared. So in company with my old 
gossip I walked down a steep path into the place of the 
Quartier St. Jean in the plains of Laval. And it was here, 

* The Romans in Provence buried importantly in stone chambers 
or in baked clay tile coffins. The pantile or “Tuiles” being 
exactly the same as are used now on the roofs of real Provencal 
farmhouses. Called “Tuiles” from the Latin “Tegula.” 


A WALK FROM LA ROQUETTE 85 


in the turbulent days after Caesar’s death, that Mark 
Anthony camped with his Macedonian army of cavalry, 
the 2nd Legion, passing at dawn Vallauris and Mougins 
on the 14th of March of the year 42 B.C. en route for 
Frejus, the limit of Brutus’ domination. A dwindled 
army : only about 3,000 cavalry : anyone met en route 
was pressed into his service, and from letters written 
from Frejus (Forum Julii) to Cicero, even slaves were 
armed. Mark Anthony’s army joined the army of 
Lepidus the 3rd Triumvir, and this joint army of 70,000 
horse and foot with Rome their objective spread over 
the plains round Mougins on their return march across 
the Eterel and the march to Antibes and Nice. 

Every one knows how Octavius triumphed. How 
Mark Anthony languished in Egypt. One day in 31 B.C., 
the sea before Cannes was filled by ships; strange 
wanderous ships. Greek ships. Sicilian ships—high 
turretted Syrian and Phoenician ships, “ some having ten 
tiers of rowers ”—bright coloured sails—^painted, brilliant 
ships. Octavius’ navy taking the last of Egypt!—« 
in triumph to the Port of Forum Julii. 

So Rome pervades my vision and obscures the world 
of to-day’s gossip. 

This old lady had discreetly become as lost to me as 
the object of my visit, to find in a small chapel a 
certain picture with pretensions to fame. I asked 
for the key of this chapel at the local shop. Its 
owner, “ Patron,” in open necked shirt and a soapy 
face; behind him framed in the dark doorway, the 
smiling face of the garde champetre. The soapy face 
and a great red basin of soapsuds confirmed the 


86 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


suspicions centred around the nefarious advantages 
taken by the garde champetre. 

Later, in a cafe of the Place, I saw “ Celui de 
Mougins ” surrounded by his “ copins,” arranging a 
game of bowls for the following Sunday. 

No vision of Rome or art disturbed the vision of my 
two fellow-companions. They were of the day, in the 
day: so I walked home alone with the deep scent of 
new mown hay and a new yoimg moon for company. 


AN INTERLUDE IN MAY 







VIII 

AN INTERLUDE IN MAY 


T hese are the days of Artemis, pale and per¬ 
petual : the olive woods and the freshly 
greened oak woods harbour the nightingales 
who chant her praises. Below the hills, in the churches 
of Cannes the white and blue-gowned little priestesses, 
little vestals, the “ Enfants de Marie,” are processing to 
and fro before the rose-wreathed altars of another 
Virgin. With what inspired tolerance the religion of 
this world has welded and woven all this business—^the 
intricacies of Virgin moon-goddess, Diana, the month of 
Venus and her rites, Ceres, mother of newly-born earth- 
world, and the month of the Mother of God. No wonder 
the nightingales, those things of nature, as yet un¬ 
contaminate, driven to a frenzy of song, intermingle 
the hours of moonlight and of the sun, for their song 
escapes from the night and overlaps far into the day. 

In the little shrine opposite my studio door is a copy 
of a Virgin who dwells in the South Kensington Museum; 
a Virgin with the child in her arms, standing on a young 
crescent moon. The moon has the face of Artemis, and 
the delicate feet of the Mother of God are pressing her 
to the earth ; not unkindly, but unconsciously. Nature 

89 


90 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


has been once more triumphant. Artemis, huntress 
and fugitive in one, is now only the footstool for a 
greater virgin, the new Aphrodite, sinning within all the 
Christian moral tenets, yet escaping all Christian censure. 
Her halo is a perfect circle, the completeness of the two 
crescents of Isis, welded and joined ; the completion of 
being—^the reason for being. 

She smiles triumphantly, conscious and unconscious, 
our Virgin. She has dominated Olympus, for she is the 
goddess of Life and Death, and of Life after Death; 
she is fulfilment of Hope ; she is Nature and Wisdom ; 
she is Beauty and Chastity. “ What we are, what we 
were, and what we shall be, and no mortal shall tear 
aside the veil.” 

The olives, Minerva’s trees, tolerant of age and im¬ 
perious, droop silver shade and silver lights around her 
shrine—dreadful eternal trees, archives of the country 
side. 


FETES AND FRIENDS 


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IX 

FETES AND FRIENDS 


** r* I ^HE love of flowers lingers.” These people 
I really find happiness and pleasure in a 
bouquet of flowers. I am not sure that the 
old courting custom of presenting the nosegay does not 
survive, though the modern Riviera maiden is just as 
snobbishly shy about speaking the dialect as she is about 
accepting attentions from young men. From a collec¬ 
tion of Provencal customs there is a perfect index of 
the flower fancies, a recipe for nosegays for special 
occasions. Here is an old Provencal chanson which 
gives the lilt—so to say. Forget how Gallien, the 
Emperor, said, “ The Provencals croak like frogs,” for 
the mistral tongue is beautiful. 

“ Lou prmimie jour de mai Larirai 
Lou proumie jour de mai 
Ai fa'n bouquet d ma mie 
Lou latur, lalira, lira 
Vai di : mio tenes Larirai 
Va qui la despartido,'' 

The flowers for the bouquet were gathered on Saturday 

93 


94 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


and presented by way of declaration or invitation on 
Saturday night. Conies Sunday, the day for fete and 
“ les Boules.” Conies Daphnis (or Marius) in white 
shirt and blue trousers, with large straw hat; in his 
hand, thyme. “ My dear, this thyme is a plant which is 
beautiful at all seasons, but more beautiful when it is in 
flower. I love you always, but-” 

Comes Stephan, (or Marius) again “ en chapeau de 
paille,” bronzed and dark, with yellow eyes and black 
moustache. He brings basil—“ My beloved, I bring 
you basil, as modest as this plant I am, but should you 
love me-? ” 

But comes Damon, furious, and leaves at Philomene’s 
window a bouquet of stinging nettles. “ You are 
beautiful, but you will no longer be my friend. My 
nettles are like you—^too many prickles. Best mate with 
a thistle, my pretty—but not with me.” 

These were the rendezvous for the fete—^to be well 
or badly received during those wonderful moon-filled 
nights of May and June. 

But gone are the old songs and dances, the dances of 
Provence wherein lay a literature of a people. In the 
late seventeenth century, the dance called “ Rigaudin ” 
was forbidden on pain of a beating, and later, on pain of 
death; it being regarded as a public disgrace, so curious 
were the gestures and figures of the dance. I suspect 
the Rigaudin of being the remains of a pagan, sacrificial, 
rituahstic dance, less bacchanalian, more like the curious 
obscene dances of the Hottentots of Africa, who so 
oddly resemble the small mountain race which hved in 
the caves above Nice. Instead, you may now dance 




FETES AND FRIENDS 


95 


at the fete, the foxtrot and a dreadful form of Jazz, 
danced amid the dust of a ring of earth enclosed by- 
tenting, with a twentieth-rate orchestra instead of the 
pipes and drums of the old dances. There is too, the 
Concours de chant. Long, long interminable bourgeois 
ballads, twenty, thirty verses, a three-parts novel full 
of dullness ; or in its place an English music-hall tune 
set to French words. 

True, the rough red wine of the country still fires the 
soul, but there is a “ chichi ” and important fuss, and 
speculative parents, and those dreadful artificial silk 
stockings worn by the maidens everywhere, slow moving 
white artificial silk legs, in the place of wide-skirted 
farandole and obscene and exciting Rigaudin. The 
maidens are good looking, Italian and Saracen types; 
and the young men dark also, except in cases where they 
are of Italian descent, when they may be fair and blue¬ 
eyed. But the women are far better looking than the 
men and possess a vitality which no amount of talking or 
dancing seems to quell. They bear few children, and 
do a small amount of work in the vineyards and fields— 
practically none in their homes—so their accumulative 
vitality escapes in chat. 

August is their great moment, for in August there is no 
work to do, and the short light nights are spent in 
dancing and song, or in slow drives down from the hills 
to the sea. It is a month when the drought is at its 
chmax and the high dry air, fanned by warmer Sirocco, 
withers even the palm leaves, and strings and tunes up 
nerves and tempers and passions. The old end their 
days—their prolonged ante-Garibaldian, ante-jazz days ; 


96 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


they die of age, or drown themselves, weary of too much 
sim and an empty brain; the young make love and 
dance and marry, and the others give way to other 
excesses, drink, crimes of jealousy and revenge. In 
one hot August week I have helped to drag the neigh¬ 
bouring wells for the body of Gabriel Bertran, who 
walked out one hot morning into the sun, and out into 
darkness ; and yet that night returning home from the 
village fair, we almost tripped over the still warm body 
of Pitagore Ferrero, shot while returning from the fete. 
Next day we saw the Gendarmes arrest the father-in- 
law of Pitagore, a great, tall broody northern Itahan, 
accused of the murder, confessing and retracting as the 
barometer soared or fell. And when the full moon is 
white over the land and the chicken yards, there is 
looting and robbing—chickens, rabbits, grapes ; and 
should you shoot—for there is always an old gun handy— 
be careful your shot meets its mark on your own 
boundary and not on your neighbour's; for the one is 
legitimate defence, the other is murder. Moonlit 
summer nights are busy and disturbed; the dogs are. 
so jumpy and fidgety that their warnings are unreliable, 
and based on shadows mostly, or perhaps they really 
do see the silent forms loading stolen grapes into a 
push-cart. Oh ! August is a jade of a goddess. 

I have known a murderer intimately. A respected 
man of the village, this landlord, big and stout, full 
of goodwill and good wine, well-off too, otherwise, 
even with the leniency of a Southern French jury, he 
might have passed more than a few months in the Nice 
Gaol. One summer’s evening, during the fete, he shot 



A VILLAGE PLACE. 






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FETES AND FRIENDS 


97 


his mistress under the Hme trees. She had perhaps 
been unfaithful! She worried him for more money. 
He wished, perhaps to marry and settle, and she worried 
him : she was not reasonable, and “ he had treated her 
very well.” The jury quite sympathized, and the 
French habit, called for convenience Le Syst^me D, 
stood him well. By this system one may get passports 
arranged in ten minutes, instead of ten days ; one may 
get motor papers in one minute instead of six months ; 
one may never pay taxes ; one may turn an enemy into 
a friend ; one may buy silence from a Provencal, justice 
from a Parisian; one becomes a Mayor, or a senator; 
or a President; or a bandit, who never is arrested. 
Systeme D, apotheosis of corruption; the corruption 
of Beaurocracy. Beastly, money-grubbing, little men, 
pot-bellied, with big intelligences and mean hearts; 
preposterous and brave, determinably rude and ag¬ 
gressive. The “ Bourgeois Bureaucratie ” of France : 
her danger, her end perhaps. 

Once upon a time, there was beauty in France; on 
her lands they built beautiful monuments, lovely 
churches, splendid palaces, charming old stone Maas, 
and farms; once upon a time there was courtesy and 
politeness in all ranks of French life; an integrity of 
character and a certain national generosity. Now— 
there is patriotism and intelligence, and that dreadful 
stinginess and caution that makes for ugliness of form 
in nature and in art. 

Aristocracy of thought or action is looked upon with 
suspicion and lives in isolated retirement and resent¬ 
ment, while Systeme D, thrives. 

G 













































ON VINEYARDS 






ON VINEYARDS 


^ ■ VHE vineyards are laden with young grapes, 
I their leaves irridescent with the invigorating 
powder of sulphur and the Persian blue 
copper-sulphate which lie thick upon them. Under the 
great cherry-trees, two great earthern pots or “ jarres 
de Vallauris ” look like Persian pots of Omar, with the 
blue liquid oozing and trickling over their opaque 
surface—^for here the peasants keep their store. 

Soon will be on us the quick feverish days of the 
vintage, when the fruit of the years of man’s labour 
will from the feet pass into the stomach, for his 
consoling. 

On all the old peasant farms they tread the grape- 
in the deep cool cellars with decay and rot and rust 
around where all the changes of nature take place in the 
darkness, here they tread and squeeze the grape ; here 
the juices ferment; here they strain and bottle. Bust¬ 
ling business ! Then after a time, the disturbed dust 
and spiders’ webs and the leaving and breedings of ages 
once more settle gently and inevitably over the silent 
cellar. There is a quality in dust and rubble; there is 
an atmosphere and there is a magic, without which 
101 


102 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


wine loses its personality. Garnished, polished cellars, 
scrupulous as in a hospital, seem too new, too domineer¬ 
ing for the conscious dreadful fermenting of the wine. 
For its mysteries it seeks quiet and darkness. As you 
would leave a brooding hen, fixed, hypnotised in her 
task, intent on her eggs, in some quiet darkened place, 
so, you will leave the wine to its methods; to peace and 
its own methods in its own time with no prying. 

There is magic knowledge found in ancient hus¬ 
bandry : magic, for it is knowledge inherited from those 
who told the stars. Among peasants this magic is 
common knowledge. Where is the scientist who will 
tell why on the fifth day of the moon storms and rain 
will fall to damage new-turned ground ? Who shall 
say why vines planted on the seventeenth day take 
well ? Who knows why ? Again, but this is simple to 
explain, the ancients feared to plant a vineyard to face 
the setting sun. They said and we do, “ Plant vines on 
a slope, and plant wild vine and graft.” 

This is the first labour of the vine; every year two 
or three times, the soil is dug, loosened and hoed— 
the hoe with head reversed. Now leaves appear, and 
fresh green shoots and tendrils—garlands, they form. 
These are gathered in and tied; in some cases all 
brought together over the vine to shield the tender 
branches of flowers from late storms. Now the vine is 
sulphured ; bright yellow vineyards greet your eyes 
this day—irridescent yellow acres. Again, upon another 
day, the vines are turquoise blue with copper sulphate 
sprayed. Then, said the ancients, or “ les Bons Vieux ” 
as the peasants call them here, then. 


ON VINEYARDS 


103 


“Be first to delve the ground, 

Be first to cart the prunings, 

Be first to house the poles, 

But 

To gather in, be last!” 

And there’s the rub 1 And there’s the thrill! How 
late to leave your gathering, e’er the rains fall and the 
vintage be lost I 

Virgil says, and the gods know, Theocrites certainly 
said it before him, and someone before him, and we 
perpetuate their words- 

“ Plant the wild vines near the spot where you will 
graft. Mark, too, the trace of sun upon the bark, that 
as each stood before, facing north or south, so they will 
stand again.” 

And what of the soil ? If heavy and flat, plant thick ; 
if in steep slopes, be free with space and see when you 
plant that all your lines be true. Line after line, in 
parade, dispense equal justice to every plant. The 
trench need not be deep. 

Now Virgil’s vines grew high, and clung and twined 
from tree to tree in heavy garlands. Here they keep, 
with pruning, near the ground, and find this way the 
sun’s work manifold—^low, heavy, purple branches, all 
trailing to the earth. But sometimes, and here you see 
the hand of him who hails from Nimes or Italy, the vines 
are trellaced-trained, in avenues of wire, straight and 
overmeeting, intertwined ; sometimes slantways to catch 
the even rays of sun, but these are mainly vines for 
market purposes and are dressed in paper bags to shield 
the grapes from cold and frost. 



104 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


When the wine is pressed and placed in casks there is 
a faint echo of the Bacchus festival—no slain goat upon 
the altar, few songs, no dances; but neighbours come 
around the autumn fire to taste the new wine; rich, 
fermenting, sparkling stuff. Round the cellar door, 
under trellis, seated at a little outdoor table, the new 
wine is drunk and its maker’s health is asked. Even 
then the thing is not complete. From the sediment they 
distil most secretly a pungent dreadful spirit, the Maac. 
The liqueur is used for ills and pains, and on cold winter 
mornings before market carts and trams are sought. 
Its innumerable degrees of alcohol run a pleasing warm 
melody through the veins. It is drunk on a frosty 
morning, or at night round the smoking pine log fires, 
whose enveloping plaster cowl, as used by the Romans, 
lets in the air and keeps in the smoke. 


SERTORIUS CAMP ON 
CASTELLARAS NEAR MOUANS 













































XI 


SERTORIUS CAMP ON CASTELLARAS 
NEAR MOUANS 

T he Roman matrons were not without sentiment 
and romance—one thinks of them perpetu¬ 
ated in dignified stone, seated, triumphant in 
“ noblesse oblige,” almost “ purdah ” in the secret 
lawful defences of their lives and homes. There was, 
however, a lady Raielia, who came from perhaps Antibes 
one hot summer to the cool heights of the hill between 
Mougins and Grasse, called Castellaras. Here the great 
General Sertorius once had his camp to watch the sea¬ 
board while Marius beat the Teutons beyond the Alps. 
Other Colonial Roman ladies and their families moved 
to the heights of these old Ligurean camps during the hot 
weather, but here, at Castellaras, Raielia had the mis¬ 
fortune to lose her son, Quinto Luccunius Verus, and 
made him a monument. This lives in stone, punctuated 
with engraved cypress trees and hearts; yet full of 
dignity and mourning are the words—^with the dedica¬ 
tion to the gods of the household—Les dieux Manes. 


107 


108 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


A. D. M. 

RespicCy proeteriauSy ora Tituluniy 
DolebuSy arurriy Promaeture nimioum 
Sim Mortis adeptus, TriguilOy an 
Borumy Raptay est miti Sux graiissi 
Ma vitae et de gente mea solus sine 

Parvolo quern Mater miserum 
Flevity quod pictatis Honore Relicta 
Est Q. Luccunio vero 
Ravelia segundina Mater 
Filio pissimo Fecit 

To-day the new owner at Castellaras has placed the 
stone in the wall of his library—^though any corner of 
the old house or grounds is a worthy background for 
the hearts and the cypress trees that tell of Raielia and 
her heart. Or was it that she found a slave to do the 
work, and the slave was a sentimental slave ? for who 
was sentimental enough in those days save the northern 
people—^as they are still in their snows and forests. 
Little hearts and cypress trees—hieroglyphics of inter¬ 
national southern mourning ! But somehow, strewn 
among those dignified classic Roman words, they 
seemed paradoxical. Yet again I remember the few 
words on the Mougins memorial stone, half-buried in 
the dark chapel at Notre Dame de Vie. . . . “ To Flavia 
who Hved so short a time.” They breathe strength and 
feeling, but the other dedication, that to Raielia’s son, 
has a poetry which is not Roman. 


SERTORIUS CAMP 


109 


Castellaras is for us a lighthouse rising out of the 
Colonial Roman life, with a distinction and a very 
definite meaning. The General, Marius, was sent from 
Rome into Provence to stem the threatening over¬ 
whelming Teuton tide. Marius was as a god-deliverer, 
a saviour, to the terrified Provencals: every boy child 
born in those years, and nearly every boy child born 
since those years, is named Marius. 

One of Marius’ Captains was that celebrated Sertorius, 
who later, in Spain, played a role against his chief. He 
was left here by Marius to guard the mountain passes 
and chose for his camps the high commanding hill, 
called later Castrum Sertorii, choosing the old Ligurian 
hill-camps for his other outposts—Encourdoules near 
Vallauris, and St. Vallier, high up in the mountain plains 
above Grasse. Here Paul Goby finds neolithic dolmens 
and tumuli amid the debris of stone Ligurian walls. 
Thus history honeycombs through a former history and 
builds its monument upon more ancient stones, until 
the peasants who inherit the earth, and all that is on it 
—^which they can get at—come quietly, day by day, 
and take the stones away to build a new barraque for 
themselves. 

So Sertorius on Castellaras dominated the wide sea¬ 
plane which unrolls in gentle low hills from Nice to La 
Napoule. 

Stand on a summer’s evening, when fireflies signal their 
lights in the shadows of the cypress trees planted by the 
monks who came to breathe cool air from Les Lerins, 
and through the great oaks which grow inside the circular 
walls; watch Nice, white and paling blue into the sea 


110 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


mist, the red roofs of Antibes and its towers catching a 
last sunset ray, the darkening coolness of the Gorge du 
Loup above like a deep purple rent in the high mountains, 
the deep wooded mysterious valleys of the river foaming 
and opaque, falhng and tumbling down to Cagnes and 
the marshes before the sea. Look how the huddled, 
frightened-looking village of Valbonne hugs itself more 
closely ; so closely that hardly a light shows ; for once 
in old days, the limits of the village were defined in a 
perfect limited square and no house has since passed 
that confine. So huddled are its high houses that no 
sun passes into its narrow streets, no matter what season 
of the year, and except for its low arcaded Place, painted 
in green vine leaves, there is little air. Then turn left¬ 
wards, towards the lights of Grasse—Grasse, like a 
decked languorous woman, lying back—her jewels 
sparkling and flashing—^vying with the stars ; above 
show the few lights of Cabris pointed and aloof; further 
those of St. Cesaire, high and certain of their importance ; 
and towards the sea and the Esterel the outline of the 
coast darkens against the luminous silhouette of the 
sea. The little owls of Anthene break the immense 
silence. 


THE ANCIENT CHAPEL OF 
NOTRE DAME DE VIE 




X 


XII 


THE ANCIENT CHAPEL OF NOTRE 
DAME DE VIE 

S HOW me a spot where time is held by peace and 
happiness, where desire dies in the arms of 
content. 

Here—under the thick cypress of N6tre Dame de Vie 
—^where the view of the world is spread out below and 
around, like a coloured map, and the prayers of thankful 
peasants hover in half-articulate flight to some celestial 
throne among the great white clouds, wherein is a 
Blessed Virgin appearing at psychological moments on 
the receipt of these messages of faith! 

A Notre Dame de Vie, 

O Vierge Advocate de Mougins, 

Pleine de Grace, toute belle, 

Priservez desormais de grele 
Nos fruits, et ceucc de nos voisins, 

En reconnaissance iternelle 
Nous viendrons en procession 
Deux fois Van d cette chapelle 
Louer votre protection. 

Ex voto de la paroisse de Mougins, 
1670 . 


H 


113 


114 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Engraven on the stone tablet to the left of the altar, 
this votive offering gives the clue to the curious collection 
of pictures, mostly by the hands of the faithful, 
dotted about the thick Roman walls of the chapel. 

Hail is the deadliest weapon nature uses against the 
peasant. A hail storm in May, and the flower of the 
vine is scattered over the hard earth, and the hopes of 
a good “ vendage ” go with it. In the year 1670 the 
country-side, laid out so orderly and exquisitely below 
us, was swept by dreadful storms. Curiously enough, I 
have noticed that the ominous clouds, which gather in 
from the snowcapped Italian Alpes when the chill little 
damp wind from Corsia drives them quickly and heavily 
up to Grasse, are spread in dark golden circles to the 
west and to the south, and so back to the east, and we 
smell the rain: but Mougins and its hills and valleys 
seems to sit untouched in the midst of this nature 
schema. Many a time I have watched storms encircle 
and avoid. This is due to the lie of the land ; the play¬ 
ground for clouds along the long valleys, stretching from 
Grasse through forests to the sea at La Bocca, and on 
the right through Le Cannet to Cannes. 

The chapel of Notre Dame de Vie, so called because 
the chroniclers of the Lerins constantly refer to Mougins 
as Villa-Vetus (or Monasterium) for no apparent reason 
except that the Seigneur of Mougins offered to the abbey 
half his possessions. Roman-Provencal in style, dull 
red, pantiled, the roof edged with whitened tiles called 
“ Genevoisie,” forming a scalloped, fringed decoration. 
The chapel is attached to a smallish building obviously 
used by the monks as a place of retreat and is now falling 


NOTRE DAME DE VIE 


115 


into ruins with a hundred and one faded colours, in 
roof, and walls, and painted shutters—a rhythmic 
whole wherein tones of Provencal paint, made of earths, 
red, blue and yellow, play their quick, harmonious scales 
with much discretion, no doubt aided by time. This 
picture of moral peace and saintliness is painted in two 
rows of superb cypress trees, and massed by oaks, which 
form a hedge beyond the cypress. From here is a view 
of the world. The narrow, deep Canal of the Siagne 
follows the contour of the Hermitage hill. Opposite, 
perched perpendicularly on its own particular hill, is 
the town of Mougins, once the Ligurian stronghold. The 
cur6 of Mougins will tell you this is a town without any 
interest. He is almost right and yet so wrong. Of 
Mougins more anon. For while the light is still good, 
armed with the huge key lent by the cure, let us go inside, 
into the chapel of Notre Dame and read and see the 
votive offerings with which the walls are plastered. 
Here is the faith, superstition, literature, and art of a 
peasant people. 

Take care that in the darkness of the vestry you 
do not fall over a slab of Roman memorial tablet— 
“ To Flavia who lived so short a time.” Oh, 
these intellectually dramatic Romans! ... To a 
collector of glass pictures it would appear that he had 
come upon a mass of such, for these votive offerings are 
painted by the offerer—apparently on glass or on canvas 
well glazed. Some date from the early 17th century 
and give an idea of the interiors and costumes of the 
peasants of that day, some are like first-empire 
aquatints, with recognisable local dwellings and land- 


116 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


scapes. Usually the miracle of life preservation is the 
subject, with directions underneath the picture as to 
how it happened, and always above in the clouds, the 
apparition, bust length, of the Blessed Virgin, through 
whose intervention “ such a one has been saved from 
infallible death.” They are naive and completely 
adorable, these votive offerings, and merit a better 
attention and care than dust and crumbling frames and 
walls can supply. 

Now the departing sun sends a last ray through the 
small barred west window: it falls on the child Gillian 
kneeling on the altar steps. She feels called upon to 
pray and confides that all she could think of was “ Our 
Father.” Being a mother the Virgin could not be hurt 
by this slight, she thought. 

Later we carried the great heavy key up the opposite 
steep hill to Mougins, red-capped in the sunset; this 
effect of the setting sun on the crest of the village gave 
rise to a conjecture as to the derivation of the word 
“ Mougins,”—i.e. Mons Ignis, or fire hill. But much 
the most feasible etmyology is the usually accepted one 
which I have mentioned before, that the Ligureans and 
the Deceates, expelled by the conquering Roman from 
Cannes and the neighbourhood, settled in the village 
and made it their capital, calling it in souvenir Mons 
Egitna. In all the Roman records this important town 
is referred to as Mons Egitna. 

During the Middle Ages Mougins formed part of the 
possessions of the Prince of Antibes, one of whom, 
Guillaume and his wife Fida, gave in 1036 the castrum 
of Mougin and its territory to the Monastery of the 


NOTRE DAME DE VIE 


117 


Lerins. Mougins possessed several noble families and 
the town was of importance in the middle ages, being 
the seat of a judge whose jurisprudence extended over 
Cannes. They were savage fierce believers these Mou¬ 
gins Antibes nobles, or else time has maligned them; 
for I find one of these gentlemen forced his wife to eat 
her lover’s heart! A very loathly form of vengeance. 

South East of Mougins where there are now swampy 
lands, was a lake where eels abounded, and wild fowl 
shooting was a favourite winter sport. 

Mougins has alluvial ground :—^at one time the Val- 
lauris potters exploited an aluminium mine in its neigh¬ 
bourhood, but one wiser than his friends sent some of 
the soil to Marseilles where from the mineral extractions 
he drew considerable benefits. 

In about 1870 a mass of lithographic stone created 
enough excitement among the geologists to send a 
batch of moustached scientists hurrying second class 
from Paris to report on the extraordinary stone. From 
old reports, they were unable to label it and returned 
disconsolate. The hill of Mougins to the South West is 
riddled with curious shallow caves where the earth and 
rock appear to be of volcanic substance. 

In the old Place of the village is a cafe kept by a 
charming Nicois family where one may enjoy perfect 
omelettes and garlic salad, while watching the great 
gleaming snow field in the sky over the Italian Alps, a 
reflection one sees in Switzerland on dark nights, reflec¬ 
tion in the sky of the snow like a luminous, thick fluid 
above the snow mountains. Here, in the Place over¬ 
looking sea and land is the statue of the Command- 


118 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


ant Lamy, he of Fashoda fame, a child of Mougins. 
In summer, while the valleys and seaboard register 100 
degrees of heat, Mougins, from its cool altitude, is never 
too warm, only unfortunately, like all these hill-towns, 
uncomfortably crowded. Deep narrow streets, whim¬ 
sical in plan and design, following the original of all 
streets, i.e. short cuts to important spots ; short cuts 
made by timeful people who took the easiest way in lieu 
of the shortest; even the Romans had to follow the 
tortuous, slow, short-cut paths. They are banked and 
guarded and clouded and skied now, by high steep 
houses whose narrow roofs tiled with oval, convex, 
sunbaked tiles are underpinned by more tiles in three 
tiers, washed or whitewashed. An accidental, forged- 
iron balcony, projecting and decorated with growing 
vines ; an ogive window in stone capped with a rubbed 
coat of arms; a yellow curtain and a pot of flowers; 
deep vaulted door-ways; thick carved wooden doors, 
silver-hinged sometimes, bolted and barred, keyed 
enormously, opening on to stone stairs or wooden ones ; 
vaulted or beamed ceilings, high and low rooms, red- 
tiled, red-washed or white ; old Roman tower; city 
walls ; and postern gates, Roman church with gothic 
window, fountain, plane trees with trunks like tame 
zebras in a row, a million dogs and some smells. And 
here is the recipe for a town on the hills around Cannes 
—on the low hills where the towns partake of civic life 
and are not atavistic mountain fortresses, whose war¬ 
like stone gateways are as crumbled as the sainted, 
moulding machoirs of the saints who protected them. 

This walk through old Mougins inside its walls has tired 


NOTRE DAME DE VIE 


119 


you ? Would you eat quails a la Proven 9 ale for dinner ? 
Then hurry down the hills to the cross roads, near the 
chapel of St. Bazil where the ways to Valbonne, Castel- 
laras, the Golf Links and Antibes meet and part, and 
there beg the Patronne of a little way-side public house, 
to allow you—^but, no, useless, she does not know you 
and will offer you a soupe a poireaux. . . . 

Therefore, e’er it is quite dark, hurry along the Grasse 
road, past the old mill of the Cross, to the tram-line, or 
let your Rolls Royce whirl you along the pretty Cannet 
road below Notre Dame, which will lead you to the 
Boulevard Carnot, and so to Cannes. 



THE AURELIAN WAY 
THROUGH VALLAURIS 




























XIII 

THE AURELIAN WAY THROUGH VALLAURIS 


T he sun was scorching hot through the scant 
pines on the hills of Encourdourles ; there 
was clear blinding heat all around, nothing 
seemed to pierce it, no air, nor sound, save the shrill 
cicada. The town of Vallauris, lying in the hollow 
between Encourdoules and the sea-hills of Golfe Jouan, 
was like a dull red and yellow clay Roman tile, flattened 
and baked in the sun: the sea seemed stilled into a 
solid blue sheet of glass crossed by a long white vein of 
current, caught back from the hot sand edges of Jouan 
les Pins. It was a heat almost of creation—of conscious 
new matter, forming above the dead sun-killed earth: 
of static force overheld : we ourselves burnt out into 
ghosts of ourselves, drifting to meet other ghosts in a 
common hell—sharing a common knowledge, a common 
want and common memories. It was with difficulty 
that I drew back from this oblivion to gaze once more 
on the landscape. The stony, slippery, narrow Roman 
road was below me. I had followed it from the main 
road, up from Vallauris, through the pines, past the farm 
and the site of the Chevre d’or, the golden goat once 
worshipped in these hills. “ An old legend ” said 
123 


124 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Monsieur de Vallauris, whom I found counting the 
minutes outside his farm house,—counting the moments 
or the years or his chickens, under his fig-tree. 

“ How many years since they tramped Gaul ? ” 

“ Pardon, Madame ; Pardon ;—They ? How, which, 
they ? ” 

“Yes, how long since they worshipped the golden 
goat, here, on your farm ? ” (Silly old man, stop 
counting the minutes left you of your life and watch 
with me the Roman legions coming from Cemelenum 
over Nicia.) 

He smiled and replied to my question with a dogged 
determination to sit in judgment. “ Long ago my 
Professor told me something, so long ago, I forget, but 
I have as a boy thrown stones down the well of the 
golden goat, the ‘ chevre d’or. ’ There seemed no bottom, 

yet- I remember that there was a passage from 

here, and the other end of the passage was down by 
the sea-shore, over towards Antibes.” I looked towards 
the sea following his words with my mind. The town 
towers of AntipoHs, red and tall against the sea, topped 
the neat-walled pinkness of the town roofs. Here at 
Encourdourles they had made Roman camps, for the 
hill dominated the Alpes Maritimes world—the world 
Marius was watching; the world Septonius had been 
set to guard ; the great passes of the Alpes Maritimes— 
those barriers of the Barbarians. And came a mirage 
of men, hot, dark, strong men, helmeted, armoured, 
speared, and daggered, eagles aloft, bear-skin unloosened 
hanging from a shoulder, swinging slowly up the slippery 
stony road from Cimiez, from Augustus La Turbie, 



THE AURELIAN WAY 


125 


towering white and golden on a pinnacle—^from Rome 
large and omnipresent. Along the Aurelian way hedged 
with flowered white and green myrtles, blue agapanthus 
flowers, and fig-trees; they passed—“ Our helmets 
scorched our fore-heads ”—“ Our sandles burn our 
feet.” They unhooked the helmets. Soon these 
sparkled on the short stick used for carrying their belong¬ 
ings, dangled and shimmered, like silver balls in the air. 
The sweat dripped on to the hide and steel body armour, 
yet they swung up in a burning glistening line of 
tramping men in the great fierce rays of their sun 
god—following him to his setting, from Rome into 
France. 

“ When I left Rome ” sang one, in a slow measure— 
“ When I left Rome for Lalage’s sake. By the Legions 
Road—By the Legions Road.” The soldiers took up 
the strain in a sort of chanting speaking voice ; sound, 
but no tune. They chanted in a chorus, with a synco¬ 
pated rhythm, taken from the music of Africa which 
went well with their slow march: not all the Legions 
knew this rhythmic music—these must have been in 
Africa, and were now apparently marching through 
France to Britain. After the chorus the first voice rose 
again with the verse- 

“ When you go by Via Aurelia 
That goes from the city to Gaul, 

Remember the luck of a soldier 
Who rose to be master of all. 

B!e carried the sword and the buckler, 

He mounted his guard on the wall, 

Till the Legion elected him to Caesar, 

And he rose to be master of ali. 



126 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


It’s twenty-five marches to Narbo,* 

It’s forty-five more up the Rhone, 

And the end may be death in the heather, 

Or life in an Emperor’s throne.” 

And so it seemed they chanted as we watched them 
along the Aurelian way. That night they would lie 
in Forum Julii, Augustus’ sea port, over the Esterel; 
and so on to Aix, Lyons, and then the North, and the 
cool mists, and a day worth four hours’ of sun ; and so 
up the damp green Island to the great Wall and the 
Heather and the Piets and the Norsemen, and strife and 
strain in Maximus’ endeavours to hold the northern 
Empire—^perhaps it would be gone e’er they got there, 
for later they added to the song- 

“And I’ve lost Britain, 

And I’ve lost Gaul, and worst of all 
I’ve lost Lalage.” 

Monsieur de Vallauris, the farmer, beside me, picked 
some figs from his overshadowing tree : “ Great Rome,” 
he said, “I go to lay these now on the little altar of 
Pipius, over on the hill of the Pioulet—for their safe 
journey,” he continued as if a necessary explanation 
was due to me, for up till now, I, not knowing his name, 
had called him Monsieur de Vallauris and had not 
associated him with Romans or so strangely sounding 
a god as this Pipius. 

“ Pipius is he who protects chickens, and all young 
things,” said he smiling, “ and up in the Quarter Per- 
tuades is his altar—they say the Greeks placed it there— 

* Narboime. 



THE AURELIA N WAY 127 

but I do not see the inconvenience in asking him a safe 
journey for young men of great Rome.” 

He raised his hand in salutation and shuffled off with 
his figs, into the haze of Vallauris and the Road, and I 
was left with to-day alone. 



ON THE ESTEREL 



XIV 

ON THE ESTEREL 


S uperstition and sacrifice are two of the 
legacies left by the Greeks in this land, and I 
have remarked that after the coming of the 
Christian spirit, there arose a sort of shyness about the 
mention of such things as pertained to the old religion ; 
for though the old altars and temples could be adapted 
to their new needs, they dared not mention the name of 
the deposed gods or goddesses. It is for this reason one 
finds scattered all over the country, Fountaies des Fees, 
Mountaignes des Fees, Grottes des Fees, etc., etc. These 
fountains, grottes and mountains had once been named 
after the then presiding deities. 

On the Esterel was a temple to the goddess of forests, 
to whom the mountain was consecrated, and the temple 
was called Diane Esterelle. There was pain of death 
imposed upon any one who touched a tree or plant on 
this sacred mountain. Or is this hypothesis all wrong, 
and perhaps the truth will more lately be found in the 
upside-down acts and doings of the hermit Armentan 
who lived in the middle ages, who writes that the people 
offered sacrifices to a malignant spirit, the nymph 
Esterelle, and that sterile women drank a sacred drink 
131 


132 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


concocted on the mountain which rendered them fertile. 
Possibly the Fee Esterelle existed in her magic beauty 
long before the Greeks or Romans appeared and was 
at once a terror of superstitious dread and magic en¬ 
dowment to humans. The old chronicles refer always 
to the Esterel as “ The Mountain,” and seeing that this 
gorgeous, graceful mass of rock and tree was dedicated 
to a goddess, I shall continue the flattery and speak of 
this small range as “ The Mountain.” 

For centuries an impenetrable boundary and protec¬ 
tion from the mainland, “ The Mountain ” rises from the 
sea to a height of hundreds of feet of porph 5 a’y, mica, 
jasper, quartz of all colours, and a sort of granite known 
and used by the Jews and called “ ligure,” as it was only 
found along the Ligurian coast. 

The colour of the Esterel is golden and bright rose- 
colour, almost red. It is a climax of glory to see a sun¬ 
set, or a sunrise along its southern slopes ; the glowing 
colour deluges the rocks and pinnacles until they appear 
as memorials bathed in blood—the blood of sacrifice, 
the blood of war, rising to heaven in the fires of the 
greatest god. Here was a spot for the spirit in excelsis ; 
the enthusiasm of nature towards the spirit; sensed 
and held for a few rapturous moments : as when in the 
grotto or cave called Sainte Beaume, the Mithraic wor¬ 
shippers, assembled round a stone altar in the darkness 
of rocky walls below their temple to the god of light, 
watched the narrow arrow-like opening through which 
the glorious ray of the departing sun fell into their dark 
waiting place for perhaps three minutes of blessing, and 
as suddenly faded. And while they watched, the rocky 


ON THE ESTEREL 


133 


opening closed on the luminous darkness of the southern 
blue night-sky. Thus they worshipped, having chosen 
a great moment for their mysteries. The stone altar 
bore the name of Aralucis, until Saint Honorat, founder 
of the famous monastery of “ Les Lerins,” used the cave 
as a place of retreat. Later it served as a hiding place 
to the many monks, hermits, and holy fathers escaping 
slavery in the hands of the Saracens. From that time 
the grotto became known, and still is known, as “ Sainte 
Beaume.” 

There was yet another temple that once reared tall 
and glistering from the red peak over Antheor, a temple 
built by the first Marseilliens, and dedicated to Pallas 
Athene. The peak is called Montubis, corruption of 
Mont Urbis, or mountain of the town that grew and 
flourished on the sea-coast below. Here was a branch of 
the Aurelian way, before it reached Agay and turned 
further inland. This had also been a Greek roadway to 
Cannes. Until some sixty or eighty years ago the 
peasant people of the district still called this part of 
the road “ Camin Aourelion.” Somewhere, as yet un¬ 
discovered by Marina, should be the remains of an 
amphitheatre which was called “ Maoupey,” which 
signifies “ bad ground ” or “ inaccessible country ”— 
corrupted into Malpey. Here in a neighbouring valley 
many Roman and other remains have been found. At 
Agay, further along the coast, where the precipitous 
hills leave the sea-board and undulate gently towards 
the main block of mountain in green slopes and plain, 
on the shores of a large, generous, blue bay, the 
Greeks made their most important trading station, 


134 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


or “ Comptoir,” dedicated it to Minerva, and named it 
Agathopolis. 

So the mighty nature-silences of the Esterel were 
not always so. It is pleasant to hear the chatter of the 
Greeks along the coast of Agay, and to watch the proces¬ 
sions and pastimes, and the festivals of Athens, under 
the tall olives which grew among the forests of cork and 
oak trees, rooted amid asphodel and fern. And it is 
good to hear the rhjdhmic tread of the Legions marching 
from Forum Julii (Frejus) along the Via Aurelia to Anti- 
polis (Antibes). The legions of Julius Caesar, the legions 
of young Sertorius, with those of Marius the Proconsul; 
the legions of Augustus, keeping the law and the order 
that closed the doors of the temple of Janus for so many 
fruitful and stupendous years. But with one’s face 
towards Cannes, facing the tall silhouetted temples, 
rearing on the peaks and dominating the sea-border, 
one sees the conflagration of Barbarian invasion; one 
sees fleeing dark-robed monks, tonsured and scattering 
like frightened rooks—black, flying robes beating the 
air in precipitous flight as in the Capaccio picture in 
Venice—^the monks fleeing before the flerce unchristian¬ 
ised lion of St. Jerome—^refuged inside pinkly painted 
convent walls, up fascinating Italian exterior stairways 
into pillared loggia, and into tower and red-roofed walls. 
Here, it was into cave or up high peak, or into the depths 
of a glade where wolf and boar trod through the rose- 
coloured Cyst^—others, flying to the sea, from red-rocked 
cove sought sail and boat, and in the darkness found 
sanctuary in the arms of their happier brethren on the 
Lerins Islands. A new Thebaide this, which no one has 
painted. 


ON THE ESTEREL 


135 


Then we see and hear the armies of the Emperor 
Charles V, lost in the haze of pathless rocks and forest 
between Grasse and the Esterel, driving before them the 
fugitive peoples, escaped from burned and ruined farm 
and town. And finding no better way of certainty of 
conquest, Charles set fire to the mountain and burned 
hundreds of inhabitants. But a dreadful vengeance 
overtook the Emperor —a vengeance wrought here in 
the steep narrow passes adapted to guerilla warfare. 
Having arrived at Aix and crowned himself King of 
Arles and Provence, he found his army dying of hunger 
with no reinforcements in sight, and a huge French 
menacing army at Avignon. He was forced to return 
whither he had come, recrossing the ominous Esterel. 
Here was vengeance. In the narrow defiles were 
gathered the peasants of the suffering towns of Grasse, 
Auribeau, Cannes, and other villages. They attacked 
the advance guard, the rear guard, and the flanks of 
Charles’ army, safely from behind their inaccessible 
rocks; in league with the fairy of the Esterel, the 
peasants hurled destruction on the army of the Holy 
Roman Empire and of Spain, and that way 20,000 
soldiers perished. The Emperor arrived at Cannes 
almost alone, and in a small fishing boat sought safety 
in Nice. 

Until lately there was a tower of the Middle Ages to 
be found on one of the points of the mountain. From 
here, the wretched Queen Jeanne hid, while escaping 
from the hired assassins of Durazzo. The story of this 
Queen of Naples, and Countess of Provence, is so 
dramatic and so tremendously tragic, that as Mr. Gibbons 


136 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


used to say, “ for my own pleasure I will recall it.” A 
digression from Esterel, but excusable, for above us 
is the ruined tower. Before reaching the summit of 
the road to Ere jus on what was once part of the Aurelian 
way, on the road, almost at the entrance to the moun¬ 
tains, when the road rises and climbs steeply to the pass 
above the plains of St. Raphael, one may stop before the 
old inn, under the shade of four gigantic and extremely 
old elms. Over the inn door is an inscription bearing 
this information—^that in 1663 “ ceste maison a este 
rebastie par le Sieu Langier.” It is now known as the 
“ Auberge des Adrets.” There was once near this inn 
a mine of sulphur lead which was used by the potteries 
of Vallauris. And, say the old papers I have before me, 
the prices of this inn were so exorbitant that there 
passed a saying into the language of the country : when 
anything was charged excessively high, it was said, 
“ Oh, c’est TEsterel.” 

Indeed, it would seem the malicious fairy is still 
having her “ galeja,” as the joking Provencal says, and 
has invented a proverb which is more in the manner of a 
way-side Roman stone : for the kindly acceptant people 
in whose blood is the tolerance of the foreign invader, 
have grown to take with a smile as much as may be given, 
or got. There might, with great reason, be placed this 
warning, where the Route Nationale leaves the mountain 
to traverse Nice and Monte Carlo— 

“ C’est rEst6rel.” 

Under the gigantic elms, hoisted and creted up with 
cement to defy more years, will you drink an infamous 



NOTRE DAME DE VIE, MOUGINS 








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ON THE ESTEREL 


137 


vermouth, while I delay you with the story of Jeanne 
who ruled over all that one may see from the heights of 
the Esterel and beyond, where the Corsican mountains 
remind one of another more lonely island, further south. 
Those were the days of romantic history—the islands in 
the Mediterranean counted when Majorca was a king¬ 
dom, when Sicily stood for art and learning, and Sardinia 
held court’s festival. It is not usual for the cold, blood¬ 
less literature of a dictionary to stir the imagination, 
but in this case, the story of this unhappy and beautiful 
lady of the Middle Ages wants little else to make a 
tragedy from the authentic prescription of facts. 

History is strewn with Jeannes, unhappy queens 
mostly, mad and bad and unfortunate, but none such 
as this Jeanne, she of Sicily and Naples, Countess of 
Provence in her own right, daughter of Charles, King of 
Sicily in 1327. She was a beautiful, elegant, fascinating 
woman, clever and brilliant, and full of the temperament 
that goes with all this brilliance. Seeking, always 
seeking some happiness, and for ever finding bitterness 
and disappointment. Unfortunately she sought this 
happiness in one channel always—^through men, whom 
she fascinated by her beauty and by her wealth and 
power. It is doubtful if she ever loved any of her four 
husbands, or if her love survived her quick disillusion- 
ments. The one man on whom she lavished her 
maternal, jealous devotion, on whom she counted, her 
adopted son, Charles of Durazzo, deceived her, tortured 
her, and ultimately killed her. The murder of her first 
husband, Andrew of Hungary, whom she ha^ed, let loose 
many scandals and brought his brother, the King of 


138 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Hungary, to avenge him. Jeanne, who had quickly 
remarried Louis of Taranta, sought refuge in a flight to 
Avignon, where she bribed the Pope, Clement VI., to 
annul her first marriage and declare her innocent of the 
murder of her first husband. She paid the Pope 80,000 
florins and all the fair lands around Avignon for this. 
So she regained her throne and was widowed in the same 
year, 1362. Again she married at once, John, King of 
Majorca. This marriage was also unhappy, and her 
husband, mindful of the fate of others, fled to Spain, 
where he died in 1375. For the fourth time the queen 
married—for there was always a suitor or a lover wait¬ 
ing. This time she chose a Teuton, Otto of Brunswick. 
A disastrous arrangement. The Pope was hurt and 
Naples furious. The old scandal of the first marriage 
and the murder broke out afresh. Having no child, 
Jeanne had adopted Louis of Durazzo and had brought 
him up and educated him. The people of Naples pro¬ 
claimed Durazzo King, and Clement, from his tall golden 
palace in Avignon, advised the wretched Queen to 
adopt in place of the ungrateful Durazzo, Louis Duke 
of Anjou. The surrender of Jeanne to the besieger of 
her kingdom, her once beloved Durazzo, is of vast 
dramatic movement and emotion. She surrendered just 
as the Provencal fleet, saiHng to her help, was sighted in 
Naples bay. Durazzo received her well, keeping an 
eye on the knights and captains of Provence, but Jeanne, 
dramatically, before her captor and her knights, pro¬ 
claimed Anjou as her successor:—“And now, gentle 
knights, I know what Fate reserves for me. Tell Anjou 
to avenge me on the brigand who holds me captive.” 


ON THE ESTEREL 


139 


Poor lady: she again, and for the last time, counted 
on affection, and gratitude, or duty—she coimted on 
the last man on whom she had bestowed her love— 
Anjou. 

But Anjou was having a gorgeous time in Provence, 
looting, raiding and subjecting. This pillage took two 
years. Two years—while Jeanne in the grim Tower of 
Murano, dreaded each day, yet prayed to be spared 
another. One night her anguish came to an end, and 
this hopeless woman was smothered under a heavy 
mattress. So ends this life of scheming, and hoping, 
and escaping, dread and difficulty, passion and pain. 

And now that the vermouth of Les Adrets is finished, 
let us take the Aurelian way, returning to Cannes and 
leave these Esterels in a golden sunset. 


August, 1923. 

Almost as I write and face the sunset a greater and 
more dreadful blaze is over all. The Esterels is on fire I 
And I am reminded of Smollett in the year 1760 who 
drove out to see the terrible devastation wrought on 
the Esterels by the great fire which had burned for 
several days. He writes in his forceful stomachful 
English, in a fury and rage, that it is something like a 
great crime to know how few or no precautions are taken 
to prevent so dreadful a disaster. And, possibly, only 
our children will see again the cork trees, the chestnuts, 
the asphodels and bracken, and the sweet cyst which 
we have known—^the gorgeous luxuriant forest of the 
Esterels. Where there was luxury, will be sparseness : 
a burned and charred skeleton of this decorated temple. 


140 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Perhaps we shall discover some of its mysteries bared; 
for me, I shall not look. There were seven hells let 
loose in the sky about the Est^rels this night; enough 
flame and enough fire to bum for ever the goddess, the 
unknown, evil, enticing Fee of the Est^rels. We looked 
upon tier and tier of multi-coloured smoke, and long, 
licking lines of descending fire ; the roar of an unchained 
element, roaring as the heaving, slopping, slow waters 
of the Mediterranean roared, the night Messina sank, 
and crumbled. Little, isolated, burning houses like 
pommes de pin alight, hardly counted; little pathetic 
properties burned —tant pis. Here was an element un¬ 
chained, avenging, riotous, unquenchable, unfightable, 
dependant only on the will of another element, the wind. 
And in its good time, the wind dropped. 

Here is Nature again at her jokes, stepping in when 
we most forget her, reminding us with one of her back¬ 
ward pulls, “ You are mine, of me, and in me. If you 
would escape, leave me as a hostage your body, and see 
if your imagination will make you a ladder to the skies ! ” 


THE VIRGINS OF OLD CANNES 




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XV 

THE VIRGINS OF OLD CANNES 


“ Nous allasmes, coucher d Cannes qui est un vilage 
sur le bord de la mer, moitie haul, moitie bos ; en 
ce pays id, la cherte de vivres n^est pas encore 
introduilte, car un homme pui va par pays d la 
disnee pour luy et son cheval que vingt sol, et d la 
coucMe que trente. Nous fumes fort bien id au 
Grand Logis,^^ —Taken from a collection of old 
papers. 

A nd to you in your hotel of modern days, here are 
some words for your consoling. On the days 
in January when the sun disappears behind the 
cold “ mistral ” which is blowing across from the 
Esterel, and may blow, God help you, for two more cold 
unCannes-like days, shut up in your bedroom in the 
Grand or Carlton Hotel, with your ears tired of jazz, and 
the hour of cocktails not yet; look towards the Suquet 
Tower of old Cannes and remember there were once, 
not long ago, tall wonderful palm trees and sweet 
magnolias in the garden of the Grey d’Albion Hotel. 
Presently you will have cocktails, which is a good thing, 
for, unless you sit in the sun and see the Casino radiantly 
143 


144 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


white, a sepulchre for your imagination and your nerves, 
your eyes may sicken as you gaze over the new Cannes 
we have made for your pleasure ; but do not spit when 
you by accident pass the statue of one of those English¬ 
men who made Cannes, who found it a quiet palm- 
bordered little olive growing sea-port, and gave it to us 
for our delight. To-morrow the mistral may have blown 
itself out, the sun may shine, your liver may subside, 
and you will not look up in despair at the Suquet 
Tower. 

And now at last that I come to write upon 
Cannes, I find as it sometimes happens in novels, that 
by describing and speaking much of the surroundings of 
a character, one has really suggested and even drawn 
a full length and detailed portrait of a hero or heroine, 
without having purported to do so. I seem to have 
asked you to know many Cannes. The limitations of 
the town, its growth, its names and vicissitudes seem to 
have taken definite shape, for by the outward agitations 
and effects towards others is a man judged : so with the 
civic and psychic life of a town. Well did they make 
an altar to Isis on the sea-shore, many centuries ago, 
carved with her wise adage, “ What we are, were, and 

shall be-” with only this difference : a man grows 

familiar and adaptable to danger: the latest invaders 
are no longer the scourge of God, quite to the contrary, 
you are a very great blessing to Cannes. So it is of 
past Cannes that this chapter will speak ; of the Suquet 
and its people, the steep Suquet, the bazaar of the 
Castrum Francum, the market place of Canois, hanging 
on to the steep sides of the castle cliff in tiers of tall 



THE VIRGINS OF CANNES 145 


narrow houses and narrow paved streets. This part of 
the town was Cannes until the seventeenth century. 

The cliffs were bare and sheer on the left where the 
route to Frejus swirls round the base of the Suquet, and 
the first big villas were built in the early nineteenth 
century—^the Pavilion, Parc, and Beausite Hotels. The 
Brougham Gardens on the Boulevard du Midi were the 
playground of the Suquet children. Here they played 
their little gambling games, lazy games of chance and 
hazard, the “ mourre ” played with the fingers and still 
seen all along the coast; they gambled, these children, 
with nuts and almonds, and they made the language of 
modern French Cannes—“ j’ai tombe ma canne ”— 
“ Je me suis mange un poulet ”—“ il a d’argent ”— 
“ on m’a marche dessus.” 

Up the steep road over the Port Roman leading up to 
the Suquet, the country people drove their mules to 
market, their produce loaded into great, reed, thimble¬ 
shaped baskets called “ gourbin,” borne on the backs 
of the mules. They passed through the Suquet town 
down the Rue des Suisse to the market place, where 
on Fete days they danced the Farandole or the 
“ Roton,” a mauresque dance. On the Fete days of 
St. Donnat there were races on the Suquet, donkey 
races, and good prizes of sausages, chickens, and straw 
hats. The sailors and fishermen in their Catalan 
bonnets came up from the foreshore and the harbour, 
which reached from the little chapel now existing as 
“ remains ” in a warehouse yard on the new Port. The sea 
very nearly touched the Rue Antibes, where the flower 
market now stands, and the quarter around the church 
K 


146 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


of Notre Dame de Voyage was part of the foreshore; 
here a stream ran into the sea. There is the usual 
pretty legend of the building of this church ; apart from 
the legend a second church was probably a necessity to 
meet the demands of the growing town which was 
spreading to the east and north-east. The narrow, 
slippery, almost inaccessible path, which led from the 
sea level up to the Suquet chapel of St. Anne and to 
Notre Dame de Bonne Esperance (built in 1639). It was 
the only road up the hill unless you would do the tour of 
the town. Monsieur Chevalier, prefet of the Var in 
1822, owing to the wishes of the inhabitants of Cannes, 
caused to be made the steep swinging road which has the 
name of Street Mont Chavalier. The legend of the 
building of the church on the sea level is, as usual, an 
apparation of the Virgin, appearing to a maiden sans 
peur et sans reproche, whose life was spent among the 
sheep who roamed about the low-lying, swampy fields 
amid the olives bordering what is now the Croisette. 
The most interesting among the Cannes chapels, now 
mostly transformed or destroyed, is the small chapel of 
St. Nicholas, not far from the station. Here, tradition 
has it that in a pagan temple the first Christian altar 
was erected, and consecrated by a disciple of Christ. As 
all Provence has always been quite certain of the landing 
on her shores of the Mother of Christ, all the other 
Marys and some of the disciples, this legend is as likely 
as any other. St. Nicholas was the first patron saint of 
Cannes and the manner of his coming is this. At some 
unknown period the Saracens took away the famous 
relics of St. Nicholas. The early Greek church raised a 


THE VIRGINS OF CANNES 147 


crusade, and appealed to the peoples on the Mediter¬ 
ranean coast for support. Venice furnished the galleys 
and Cannes supplied a certain number of sailors for the 
enterprise. As an award, these Cannois asked for a 
portion of the relics and laid them in their oldest and 
most venerated sanctuary. The position of this, their 
oldest altar, makes one wonder if the Pagan position of 
Cannes did not have a great tendency to break away to 
the right, spreading to the east of the Canal, up towards 
the Pezou, where Roman tiles have been found in 
quantity. As I am sure the Aurelian way kept to the 
hills, level with Vallauris, this is all more in rhythm. 
Very little of Rome has ever been found in the old town 
of Cannes. There is the famous stone that Caius 
Venusius Andron, the administrator of the Augustals, 
placed to the memory of his daughter Venusia Antimillia 
—“ dulcissimae ” maiden. 

The “ Sevirs ” of the Augustals is intriguing, until one 
remembers that the Emperor Augustus organized a sort 
of civil service called “ magistri vicorum ” who presided 
over the cult of public Lares. To this was added the cult 
of Augustinian genii or luck ? for how shall I translate 
that verse of Ovid— 

Mille Lares Geniumque duds qui tradidit illos 

Urbs hdbet, et vici numina trina colunt. 

These priest magistrates were six in number. The 
funeral stone of Antimillia was found in Cannes, but 
near the chapel of St. Nicholas ! The oldest buildings 
in the Suquet can boast of nothing Roman, though they 


148 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


may even be far older. The oldest building hardly 
exists—it was the original Hospice of Cannes, and 
was inaugurated after the death of Consortia whom 
Hecca loved and who had her hospital at Mandelieu. 
The chateau fort, which is destroyed, mainly because it 
was never inhabited, was of no particular interest. But 
the tower is one of the most beautiful on the Provencal 
coast. Begun in 1070 as a refuge for the inhabitants 
of Cannes in the days of the Saracen invasions it was 
finished in 1395 by the Abbe of Les Lerins. The tower 
was once decorated in machecolis as is still seen on the 
St. Honorat tower. Lightning struck this tower twice, 
and its owner began to sell it as building material, until 
authority stopped him. Its decapitated beauty still 
dominates the old town and the old Port. The church 
is not interesting, but here is the famous desecrated 
coffer which before the Revolution contained the body 
of St. Honorat. To the north-east of the tower is the 
chapel of St. Anne, once considered to be of the 12th or 
13th century ; lately curious discoveries have been going 
on in this old chapel, converted at one time into a prison. 
Its history has yet to be written, but here in the curious 
stone sculptures of the walls may be found interest for 
those who have studied symbolism in its deepest mean¬ 
ing. In the crypt were found a few months ago, by 
workmen, the treasure and statues belonging to the 
Church before the Revolution. Great and pious care 
was taken of them by the Cure of those days. He signed 
and sealed each object encased in its leaden, bell-like 
outer covering: his writing is very clear and precise. 
The leaden cases have protected throughout the genera- 


THE VIRGINS OF CANNES 149 


tions, and the treasure intaet is onee more installed in 
the Church. 

To-day and ye^erday and to-morrow are conse¬ 
crated to the Fete des Pecheurs, and here again I stumble 
on one of the paradoxes of Cannes. 

There are still quantities of fishermen but there are 
no fish. At least—few fish and very expensive. The 
great anchovy industry seems to have almost entirely 
disappeared: the fishermen will say the anchovy has 
disappeared : there is a distinction between the anchovy 
and the industry. They give several reasons for this 
scarcity of fish. It must indeed be only of late years, 
for nearly all the old maps of Cannes and its coastal 
neighbourhood are maps giving old fishing rights, limits 
and boundaries. The land topography is incidental, 
artistic and decorative. Also in the middle ages the 
fishermen of Cannes, holding their importance from 
inheritance of Ligurean ancestry, were of such import 
and standing as to have what amounted to a freemasonry 
and a small Court of their own for settlement of disputes. 
King Rene created this institution. It was called 
“ Prudhommes peucheurs.” They wore “ une robe noire 
et la Toque les jours de fete.” They are responsible for 
the continuance of many old customs—that of midnight 
marriages—the midnight courting songs, the “ chari¬ 
varis ” made at the home of a widower who remarried, 
and most interesting of all, an old Egyptian custom, 
“ les discours fun^raire.” The discourse over the dead, 
usually a moral criticism. Long after Rome was dead, 
the Cannois and their neighbours at Vallauris perpetu- 


150 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


ated this custom, which is found alike in the north 
and the south. 

During the appalling days of the reign of Jeanne of 
Naples, when to live through a day was a matter of 
hazard and luck, the Cannes fishermen quietly continued 
to fish for coral, and to spear fish with their two pronged 
fork on calm nights, near the shore, by the light of the 
flambeau carried in the prow. 

And now they tell me that violent methods bred 
of violence—dynamiting the water so the dead or 
stunned fish floated to the top—have deprived Cannes 
of one of her most ancient rights, and one of her most 
ancient and most indisputable glories. 


WRITTEN IN THE RECORDS OF CANNES 

It was told to me, one hot day of July over iced 
drinks in a Cannes cafe ; told by a “ Felibre distingue,” 
a friend of Mistral, the great Provencal poet, who was 
the son of a peasant and in whom the love of the land 
was as a poison in his blood, a stimulant, and a fragrant 
strong essence. He began with the languages o f S out hern 
France. He collected the dying Languedoc, the dead 
Languedoil, with the poetry, legends, history, romance 
and beauty they stood for. He shut them in his heart and 
in his brain; he fed them on his blood; on his life blood, and 
there bloomed something very lovely from this. They 
gave him the Nobel prize in the north, they translated 
“ Mireille,” his poem story, into Japanese in the east, 
they acclaimed him as a prophet in the south ; the west 


THE VIRGINS OF CANNES 151 


will know him because of their hot-house erudition. 
But Frederic Mistral made a heap of these honours 
and glories, together with the Nobel prize-money, 
and he gave them all to the Society he founded in 
his Provencal country—^the “ Felibre.” This Society, 
which is one of literature and mysticism, historical and 
civic ethics, has its home in the south and appeals to 
the south, it has not yet bred the genius that Sinn Fein 
conceived—I doubt if it ever will—its people are too 
happy, too comfortable, too wise. The Greco-latin 
brain has little room for sentiment which is merely a 
“ floraison,” or a blooming of the stem matter. The 
Provencal “ galeja,” the joke, is too near the surface, 
the joke against you or oneself! a laugh and a wink and 
a devastating clarity of vision, only disproportioned by 
oneself! The Provencal looms very big when he is 
seen by himself. Un beau sentiment—oh, yes, that 
always has its place; but a sentimentality without 
basic structural legs and a fair round belly— No. 
They are jealous these people ; yes, because they find 
themselves, “ costaud,” fine, smart fellows, worthy, 
splendid. They love a woman and will fight for her; 
not because she is worth the bother, but because they 
desire her, and no one else shall dare ! They are very 
sane, and though they may deceive the “ estranger,” 
they never deceive themselves—with the one excep¬ 
tion ; they must always see themselves magnified, as 
persons too big, too important, too beautiful. At 
least they say so in millions of words; torrents of words; 
they excite themselves with words ; they make them¬ 
selves a cleared space, and there they strut with their 


152 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


tails all out—^themselves in excelsis—fine fellows I 
nearly gods. And the story told by my friend the 
Felibre, is full of this clarity of vision, this lack of senti¬ 
ment. 

For the Heroes of this tale, one must go back to the 
Saracens, and to that moment in the civic life of Cannes 
when the living Christian spirit of the L6rins island 
spread its domination over the Litoral; almost one 
might say the civic life of the Litoral towns began with 
the Lerins and their monastic sway. The Saracens had 
the custom of swiftly descending, swooping down, on 
Fete days, into Cannes, or any of the coast towns, and 
carrying off the most beautiful maidens (incidentally 
the most beautiful young men). 

On one famous occasion, sixty of the loveliest girls 
were seized under the very noses of the people of Cannes, 
and placed on board the Saracen ships. Adieu, Cannes ! 

The local Cure carefully recorded this awful happening 
in his parish record, next day; he was a very young 
Cure, and, no doubt, tremendously impressed : possibly, 
the shrieks of those Cannes beauties haunted him, 
interrupted his peace by day and by night, and every 
hour he prayed for their souls, for those sixty virginal 
Cannoise souls ; and he exhorted his flock to do likewise. 
He prayed for their deliverance and for their souls. 
For sixty years those sixty virgins were prayed for by 
the Cure of Cannes. His prayers must have made a 
sort of milky way up through the starry spaces to the 
heavens, and God, for some unaccountable reason of 
infinite patience, did not put down the lid. The 
prayers of this righteous soul were to be answered. 


THE VIRGINS OF CANNES 153 


One beautiful day in early Spring, the Saracen ship 
arrived,—with the sixty raped Virgins on board. To 
be returned ! A kind of “ conscience ” cargo. 

The people of Cannes were aghast. 

The maidens were now each eighty years old; and 
the Cannois defended their town against such a catas¬ 
trophe. They up, and forced the Saracens to retain the 
sixty raped virgins. Adieu, Cannes ! once more. 

The same Cure grown sixty years older, with the same 
care, noted this fact in the record book of the town— 
the handwriting has hardly changed. 

I thanked my Felibre friend for this funny and charm¬ 
ing story of old Cannes, and I realized more completely 
the pagan inheritance of this land. With the mystic 
sentimentalism of the north (in spite of Strabo, the 
Greek geographer, who says the Irish insisted on eating 
their grandfathers) we Anglo-Saxons would have re¬ 
ceived the sixty old ladies with music and mayoral 
addresses—all the local charities would have clothed 
them and housed them, and they would have been 
safely shut up in damp alms-houses for life, to dream 
of, or to forget, their dissolute Saracen days. 





1 ^ ’ t § I * * i f >• * > i /" 







A LEGEND OF MANDELIEU 




XVI 

A LEGEND OF MANDELIEU 


T O the north west of the flat meadow-flelds of 
Arluc, the buried Roman town which lay at 
the foot of the mound of St. Cassien, where 
the Siagne river floods and deltas into innumerable 
streams and marshes, across the bridge which was once 
the Ford of the river, as late as 1670, is Mandelieu. 

The Ejiights of Malta called it Mandauslocus which 
means “ the Ground of Command.” For it was here 
that the members of the various branch Houses or 
Monasteries of this order were wont to come for the 
ceremony of initiation. If you will believe that the 
perched, walled, arcaded, gated, town of Aribeau in the 
Pegomas valley, is all that remains of the important 
Roman post town of Horrhea, the half-way resting 
house between Nice and Frejus, then you can realize 
the importance of Mandauslocus, lying on the Aurelian 
way before the road sought the coast, after keeping 
along the higher hills through Vallauris, Mougins, La 
Roquette and Auribeau. 

Mandelieu is now a small, scattered collection of 
houses in a mimosa forest. 

And yet it has a sad and interesting legend, dating 
157 


158 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


from the days of early Christendom. There lived a 
proud, gentle and lovely lady, Consortia, a daughter of 
the Archbishop of Lyons, St. Eucher. Pale, gothic, 
tight-folded they carved her in stone as a Queen on 
Chartres cathedral, with her hanging, long, plaited hair 
framing her slight breasts down to her slim virginal feet. 
Her brothers gave her the lands of Mandelieu, and here 
she built and endowed and supervised a great hospice in 
connection with all the Monasteries and Holy Houses of 
the country-side. 

To her hostel, one day, after a battle with the bar¬ 
barians, came Hecca, a young and valorous prince. 

Consortia herself entertained him, and her slim beauty 
went straight to the heart of Hecca : he desired her for 
wife. 

But being in feudal rights to a chief who permitted 
no marriage without sanction, Hecca journeyed away 
to procure the necessary permission, which was given. 

With a singing heart and in his best armour, he 
reached Mandelieu. On the threshold of the hospital 
he foimd his lady and declared his love. “ Poor friend,” 
she replied from her tight-folded gothic Christianity, hke 
tortured virtue, “ this can never be, for I and my friends 
have vowed our virginity to our Saviour and to his work 
in his hospital.” 

All poor, hot-blooded, Provencal Hecca’s tears and 
prayers could not move her. 

Sadly, he returned his steps to his manor, but fording 
the Siagne, his horse stumbled, and with Consortia’s 
name on his lips he was drowned. 

Here then is a gothic vignette; like a bit of early 


A LEGEND OF MANDELIEU 159 


painted glass ; glowing, flamboyant in crude pure colour 
is Hecca and his southern impetuousness, set for ever 
between the thin, flat, clean-cut pointed window stone 
—^that clear coldness of marble porphyry, ice glaze over 
strong rock—like the white clear will of Consortia who 
was not of the south. 

Between Mandelieu and the Napoule on the coast, is 
Les Thermes on the Route Nationale. This was the 
Thermae of the Romans on the Aurelian way, before the 
road left the coast and mounted into the wildness of 
the Esterel. 

Here were famous hot-springs used by the Romans of 
Arluc. 

Below the hill of St. Peyre, in the plains along the 
river and the mountain edges, by the earnest searchers— 
the “ Ramblers of Cannes ” surely know it well—should 
be found the ruins of Avignionette or Avenionetum. 

To the church of Notre Dame de Bosco or Notre 
Dame d’Avignionette-de-la-Vignette-du-Vigneron, the 
inhabitants of Mougins, before the Revolution, 
made once a year a pilgrimage. In 1390 the 
Seigneur, who had had his castle laid in ruins, built 
a new chateau at La Napoule, and the Napoule 
inhabitants walked across the plain on Sundays 
to the Avignionette old chapel on the edges of the 
Esterel Hills : La Minette, that is the name of this 
small stretch of country. The golf-links are at its door, 
and the Route Nationale to Frejus bounds it on the 
right. Otherwise, traces of its existence are found in 
farm buildings and out-houses. 


160 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


La Napoule, up to the eleventh century, was Epulia, 
gathering during years the Provencal euphonic at the 
commencement of the word. Until the chateau was 
built and taken in 1397, when Marie de Blois presented 
the seigneurie de la Napoule to Guillaume de Villeneuve, 
there is little mention of La Napoule. In Greek and 
Roman days it had existed ; Moun San Peye was once 
Mont de Mercure, and another peak in the neighbour¬ 
hood was dedicated to Mars : south west of La Napoule 
a well existed, and was called by the inhabitants “ Ci- 
teme Romaine.” A girl of Marseilles was buried here 
and her stone was foimd dedicated to that strange local 
god, who seems to have arrived with the Greeks, and 
was kept and acclimatized by the folk of the Litoral as 
Mars-Olloubius. Some authors, passing over the turns 
and flourishes of the Aurehan way, trying to prove that 
the Romans went straight and never round, rule out 
Auribeau and the ancient Horrhea on the Aurelian way 
between Frejus and Antibes, and give its name and 
position to La Napoule. 

Either way is the solution ; for to avoid Cannes and 
the land along the sea and so up to Vallauris, it was more 
natural to leave the sea-post St. Cassien to keep high 
up in the hills and cut across through Monans and 
Mougins, past Vallauris to Antibes and Nice. 

But it is of La Napoule in the middle ages that we are 
more certain. Early Protestantism found a strong hold 
here. I am not sure that Andre de Sahess, the famous 
Calvinist schoolmaster of La Napoule, was not part of that 
convinced, noble sect who founded near and about Nimes 
a French branch of Quakers. So great was his influence 


A LEGEND OF MANDELIEU 161 


that the village was excommunicated for the good 
reason that there was no protest. Yet, oh! verily of 
the south this Napoule, true to its inheritance, for in a 
few years, when Avignon sent special missioners to 
re-gamer its lost flock, there was no mention of the 
Calvinistic tendencies of the village. 

La Napoule seems to have been almost a neat little 
bone of contention or a Naboth’s vineyard to the 
Cannois people. Its domains were illustrated through¬ 
out the middle ages in old maps, by Ashing rights, 
com rights, dues and taxes; no one ever being quite 
sure who was the rightful collector. Dreadful fights 
and squabbles used La Napoule as a champs de 
bataille: not even the omnipotent Lerins seemed 
capable of enforcing these undefined rights, born of 
gifts from Princes, gifts to retainers and monasteries. 
The beneficiaries from neighbouring towns and villages 
suddenly descending, enormous weights of measure in 
hand, to collect their alleged right in wheat, or fish, or 
com, were sure to be met with opposition. 

And here we come to one of those milestones 
where the inscription is tinged with so personal a 
touch as to make humour live in the soul we are 
kindling out of this mral, agricultural death. There 
was an old Dame of La Napoule, Madame la Baronne 
de Tourelle, who snapped her fingers at all this 
army of weights and measures which came out from 
Cannes in the days of the Napoule harvest. She owned 
the chateau and she wanted her corn and she said so. 
With Tran-Tran, her faithful servant, and her agent, 
armed to the teeth, she climbed the tower and put up 
L 


162 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


such a fight that the Measures from Cannes dropped 
their interfering little mediaeval weights and ran home 
terrified, especially as nearly all the inhabitants, armed, 
partook in the defence. The Cannes bailiff returned 
later, accompanied by his weights and measures “ reit¬ 
erating his request ” ; but Madame’s agent. La Grave, 
“ blaspheming the name of God,” replied that any one 
touching a single blade of corn would be cut to pieces. 
Not convinced, the first consul, Jean Dumas, then tried 
on the sly, to weigh out a “ panal ” of corn. La Grave 
seeing this, pistol in hand, again calling upon God and 
all the good people of La Napoule, drove Dumas and 
his “ panal ” back to Cannes, with shouts, yells and 
much more noise. Whether it was by stealth, by night, 
by confusion, who will know, but Cannes suceeeded in 
getting that corn in spite of La Baronne and the High 
Courts who gave decision in her favour. 

These old rights of corn are like the rights of way of 
the coimtry-side, disputable and indisputable, never 
written, deriving their inviolability from the persistence 
and the custom of ages. Does a path run past your 
dining-room window ? Though there be twenty alterna¬ 
tive paths, if custom and habit have used the one which 
runs past the dining-room windows, useless to fume or 
protest, or suggest another to the hordes of neighbours 
who will troop past at hours convenient or otherwise. 
There is no sense of privately-held property; there are 
few or no fences or walls of good stone, few peasants 
even know the limits of boundaries of their lands in¬ 
herited en morceaux, dotted all over the country, here 
and there; inherited from parents and ancestors 


A LEGEND OF MANDELIEU 163 


dating from the Revolution. Lately, since the war, 
there has been a feeling that it were better to keep the 
land more intact, from economical motives. There¬ 
fore the peasant-holder with one child thinks that he 
has enough, and condoles with him who may have two 
or three children. The splitting up of land in France 
has become a serious factor, not yet an active one, but 
I foresee a revolutionary movement to consolidate land, 
otherwise farming in this scattered par ci and par la 
fashion will become economically and physically an 
impossibihty. 

This is a diversion from the Lady of La Napoule and 
her Tran-Tran, but all in the picture, should you make 
a just one, of this jig-saw patterned land. To see the 
country side and the classic view of the sea-front you 
must climb out of Napoule. The zig-zag path through 
cork tree glade and myrtle up the Hill of San Peyre, or 
Mont de Mars, is rewarded, as the guide books put it, by 
a view. Little green lizards run in and out of the pink 
and jade green stones of the ruined tower and chapel on 
the hill-top, and the corn lands stretch below, in orange 
and yellow squares. 

One day the peasant-owner of the chateau of La 
Napoule will blow up, with appropriate scorn and 
intolerant fury, the vile and bourgeois dwelling sand¬ 
wiched between the Tower of La Baronne and the old 
walls, where the nine guns, allotted to the holder of the 
chateau, were lodged. The stone which composes the 
tower and walls and even the house is like a chapter in 
the Revelations; of porphyry and jasper, lapis and 
jade, sardonyx and onyx, and matrix turquoise and 


164 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


amethyst. It is composed of bits of precious stones, 
mosaic-built and strong. Here is a part of the 
Esterel themselves, the very essence in material, in 
stones, all glowing, alive, vivid. Wonderful stones, 
shaded by those rare tall trees of the south, the euca¬ 
lyptus trees, carrying to the heavens the sweet-scents 
of the earth. For the land towards the evening is the 
Garden of Spices, and the breath of the little wind from 
the hills which heralds the night, the moon and the 
nightingale, stirs the thyme, the wild mints, the aspic 
and sage, stirs the leaves of the laurel and the myrtle 
and the rapturous scent of the wild lemon and geranium 
.... The spices blow from wild gardens on parched 
hill-sides, float over the gracious garden flowers in the 
kept spaces inside the chateau walls and through the 
long fringe-like leaves of the eucalyptus trees. Below 
the chateau, below the rocks, red sails of Ashing boats 
catch the sunset rays, the salt breeze merges with the 
strong land scents, and when darkness falls a flare of 
light from the sea tells of night Ashing, fishing with 
spears as the people fished very long ago when Solomon 
made his songs. 

And this La Napoule has inspired great men in soli¬ 
tude, Flaubert, Wilde after prison, de Maupassant. It 
was the present owner of the chateau, while dining in 
his balcony overhanging the sea, who told me this, and 
how de Maupassant took the pointed hill of San Peyre as 
a background for one of his best stories and brought 
this nice little pagan hill up to date. 

We were speaking of Roman days, the turbulent 
Middle Ages, he with intolerance, in an “ Ulyssian ” 


A LEGEND OF MANDELIEU 165 


mood, in praise of the moderns—ourselves, the personal 
touch : Marina rather antagonistic but agreeing, find¬ 
ing no greater difference and surely little preference in 
any age, having the Cockney soul of a Rambler who 
rambles mentally through all ages, and in discovering 
old land-marks, adds better direction and understanding 
to to-day. For the Romance and Reason of Adventure 
and History are independent and fully sequent one after 
another—they need environment, natural or romantic 
pedestals and backgrounds : old histories give the key 
to modern adventure; and though I may see Theoule 
dominated by a soap-factory, I must see the Tower of 
San Peyre as a temple to Mars. Atmosphere is like a 
siren schoolmistress who makes curious sums and 
problems out of us and our atavism, for we are as depen¬ 
dent on the past as Henry Clewes is on his rocking chair. 
Max Nordeau on his red flannel, Mr. Grant Richards 
on his monocle and D. H. Lawrence on his Kitchenino ; 
and thereby we project ourselves into the future, for 
these men or their manners seem to be determined 
to outlive the present. And who shall say where 
history ends and adventure begins ? And I am an 
adventuress in history and there are memorials even in 
Beckenham. 






NAPOLEON CAMPS IN CANNES 




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XVII 

NAPOLEON CAMPS IN CANNES 


T he communing of great men must perforce be 
done when the night falls and they may be 
alone ; or for perfect freedom of thought and 
sohtude they must seek a high place well apart from the 
world, like St. Honorat in the glory and solitude of the 
Esterel peaks; or Socrates, who let the day lap over into 
the night, while unravelling the skein of his own visions. 
There is a very beautiful passage in Plato, well worth 
remembering and of import here, to prove the rare power 
of detachment great men are able to possess, the loneli¬ 
ness of their souls, and their power of resistance or un¬ 
consciousness of the flesh and its interferences. 

Here is the description of Socrates in thought. “ In 
one instance he was seen early in the morning, standing 
in one place, wrapped in meditation, and as he seemed 
not to be able to unravel the subject of his thoughts he 
still continued to stand as inquiring and discussing 
within himself: and when noon came, the soldiers 
observed him and said one to the other, ‘ Socrate has 
been standing there thinking ever since the morning.’ 
At last some lonians came to the spot and supped, and, 
as it was summer, having their blankets with them, they 
lay down to sleep in the cool: they observed that 
169 


170 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Socrates continued to stand the whole night until 
morning, and that when the sun rose, he saluted it with 
a prayer and departed.” 

And now for a later and more tragic vigil. Before the 
days of the present church of Notre Dame de Bon 
Voyage in Cannes, was an open square of ground sur¬ 
rounded by trees and outside the limits of the town. 

On the night of the 1st of March, 1815, about eleven 
o’clock, the children of Cannes, mad with excitement, 
rushed to their playground and found a bivouac fire, 
horses munching quietly, the troops asleep in a circle, 
decorated, beplumed generals asleep, and one solitary, 
small, dark man standing alone, looking into the starlit 
darkness. 

For a moment the Cannois children hesitated, and 
then, hands linked, they encircled the half-conscious 
Emperor, shrieking and yelling “ Vive I’Empereur.” 

The Generals Drouot, Bertrand and Cambronne leapt 
to their feet, Drouot with his sword drawn. 

“ Leave the little ones,” said Napoleon, “ little 
children are never enemies.” 

Perhaps this interruption in the midst of his solitude 
and concentration came almost as an assuagement to 
his fears. Did he still hold the enthusiasm of his 
people ? Was his name still magnetic ? Did France 
really hold for him all that the long vigil at Elba had 
promised ? Was this adventure a real sequence in the 
magical career he had followed with an inevitable 
certainty ? Had Elba broken the spell ? A few 
moments of doubt, and then out of the darkness those 
children’s voices, “ Vive I’Empereur.” 


NAPOLEON IN CANNES 


171 


He who believes in Fate and his own star must also 
watch for the signs and wonders of the land. Sleepy 
fools these men he had made Generals, they could not 
see the import of these cries : let them keep their swords 
and their fears for proper occasions. But how annoying 
the night should be disturbed. All day there had been 
tumult—^the landing at Golfe Jouan, near Antibes, the 
march and bivouac at Cannes; and in a few moments 
he was to give an interview to a Prince—^an important 
interview—Monaco must come with him to Paris—^and 
he wished the Generals asleep again and the children 
with their rowdy noise in hell. Ah ! here was his gentle¬ 
man—in white gloves so please you—as for an audience 
with an Emperor ! Good ! The stars were in their 
right courses, and there were yet some few silent hours 
before the dawn. 

But the interview with the Prince of Monaco went the 
wrong way, the argument went agley, and the few who 
listened heard the short, quick, terse tones of the 
Emperor, “ Very well, sir, you had better continue your 
journey to your own country—I go to mine.” 

And then came peace again, and the vigil of one man 
while all others slept. Only the nightingales in the plane 
trees broke the silence. So passed five hours. At four 
o’clock the camp was astir and the march to Grasse 
began. 

There lived in temporary seclusion, near Mougins, in 
a great Provence maas or manor house, one of 
Napoleons best generals, Gazan. The Gazans had also 
a town house in Grasse, as had all the landed gentlefolk 
or “ petite noblesse ” of the country side. Therefore 


172 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Gazan had no doubt inside information as to the im¬ 
perial temper and imperial loyalty of Grasse. Gazan 
knew Grasse had best be avoided on this adventurous 
march to Paris. 

And as the morning sun’s rays drifted over the grassy 
meadows of St. Bazile, below Mougins, Gazan on his old 
charger rode out to meet his Emperor on his white 
horse. And together they rode at the head of the 
little army, Gazan indicating the short cuts, whereby 
they avoided the high road to Grasse; marching 
between the hills round Castellariis up past Pres du 
Lac to a great field in the mountain above Grasse, 
called Roquavignon, on the route de Gap. And under a 
solitary cypress tree, that night Napoleon Buonaparte 
watched, for the last time in his life, the moonlight 
path of the Mediterranean waters which led from Elba. 


THE ORANGE FLOWER 
RECOLTE 



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XVIII 

THE ORANGE FLOWER RECOLTE 

L ate anemone blossoms linger like stray petals 
from a dream of flowers. The sun, not yet 
appeared, is slowly mounting to sudden fury 
from behind the hill village, whose counts were brigands 
and whose mayors become deputes. 

Insensible to politics or passion, Gillian’s bright yellow 
head is just visible among the deep grasses in the olive 
grove. The early light is a magic business when it 
deals with olives and patches of poppies lying amid the 
green corn, like molten enamel. 

Below the steep terrace where the vegetables grow, the 
sweet peas scent the atmosphere that belongs to my 
little red-roofed study. Early fig-trees shadow the 
Madonna lilies not yet in bloom. The meadows below 
are wateied by the gentle canal meandering through the 
pine-woods where the wild lavender will ripen in the hot 
days of August. The Grasse mountains are still blue, 
only the highest tips of the Italian Alps have already seen 
the sun. We are early, but the bees are before us. A 
vibrant mass of sound encircles and enfolds the orange 
trees. The entire terrace is obsessed with sound. Our 
voices seem lost in disharmony. In vain may the high 

175 


176 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


cabbages, struggling into rich yellow crowns, entice the 
bees : in vain the riper apple blossom or the loquate 
fruit attract. Here among the orange trees is the bees’ 
heaven ; here their Elysian fields. 

The ladders placed, the great sheets stretched below 
to catch the falling blossoms—our work begins. 

Each separate tree has character. Some bear great 
wax-like blooms, opaque and sparse ; others, frail, trans¬ 
parent flowers whose sun-tired petals fall at the lightest 
touch. These bear more copiously, but weigh lighter in 
the balance. These, too, the bees prefer. Some trees are 
cross and callous and bear thorns—not all their fault, 
for we pruned them too leisurely in the autumn, and dry 
hard wood is found among their leaves, as our scarred 
hands bear witness. The blossoms fall into the sheets 
below, a continuous fragrant white shower. Soon the 
sun makes work a burning affair, and Gillian and the dog 
leap on and off the sheet, with the intention of collecting 
the scent-drugged beetles that fall with the blossoms, and 
that lie paralysed amid the flowers in glowing metallic 
bits of colour, blue and green like the Egyptian scarab 
beetle. The heat and these further interruptions retard 
us, and we stop for cafe au lait and to collect and place 
in large flat baskets our kilos of blossom. We dip the 
baskets in water and place them in the cool old stone 
cellars. After nine o’clock a breeze floods over the olive 
trees, straight up from the plains of the sea which lie 
below us to the south; the Mediterranean blue, seen in 
azure pools and patches through the pines and olives. 

All through the day the picking continues ; sometimes 
the trees are gently shaken, when the blossom has been 



GATHERING ORANGE BLOSSOM, 




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THE ORANGE FLOWER RECOLTElTT 


caught and detained in flight by the leaves. This tree 
is abundant and yields twenty kilos—another only four* 
kilos. 

In the evening the baskets are carried to the receiving 
depot, a little wide-doored stone hut. The road that 
leads us there is one continuous dream of perfume. 

At the factory at Grasse each blossom will be flung 
gently upon flat square slabs of grease and left until it 
dies, but the scent will be caught and held in that wax 
and stored, and months later when melted, the essential 
thing will be still there, the sweet strong essence which, 
may then be distilled. 

Like a soul left behind from a broken body, the scent 
of the flower which is forbidden to produce fruit is. 
transmigrated and its essence caught and held in the wax. 
It sees a second resurrection when the wax is melted 
for the distillation of essential oil. Here is a whole 
nature parallel of creation and eternity. In the waxen 
tablets is preserved for more than a short time, the 
story of the orange flower; first the labouring of the 
ground, the watering, the manuring, the pruning, the 
thinning of the leaves; and lastly, the labour of the 
gathering. Here unseen in these wax tablets lie the 
commandments of Nature, working for perpetuity. 

The imthinking, tired peasants, priests of this strange 
rite, carrying or carting fragrant bales or baskets of 
blossom, form a fresco picture along the Route du 
Moulin. 

The blossom is weighed in huge brass measures and a 
receipt is given. This year the parfumeurs will pay 
very little. After the war the price was high —very 

M 


178 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


high—perhaps thirty francs a kilo—^now it will be five 
francs. 

Happy the family who may cull their own blossom 
and work their own terraces. 

The earth is an expensive mistress, should any Virgil 
sing otherwise. 


THE FLOWERS OF THE 
RIVIERA 




XIX 

THE FLOWERS OF THE RIVIERA 


y ■ \HE innovation trunks form high barricades round 
I the sunlit Cannes station during the month of 

* April. The days of the mimosa are passed, 

the hedges are gay with wild-roses, red and pink, and 
the scent of honeysuckle is upon the land ; the nightin¬ 
gales have begun their ecstasy in the cypress trees, in 
the oak-woods of the old Cannes gardens, and among 
the hills. Yet there are lilacs in England, and it is time 
to go. So every one goes. Back to London’s May 
snows, or to ghastly stuffy hours spent in the big dress¬ 
makers’ houses in Paris. The heart of the slave knoweth 
its own secrets. True, there lingers that sort of after- 
math of the Riviera season, which until the big exodus 
takes place, is not obvious in the narrow drafty 
Rue d’Antibes. These aftermath people resort to the 
smaller hotels and buy “ espadrilles ” (comfortable white 
linen heelless shoes laced a la grecque with white tapes), 
and they take hygienic physical exercise on the seashore. 
Closed are the links and the tennis courts, the Casino 
and the few restaurants, though the best of dinners may 
be had at the Taveme Royale. The world of the 
Cannois shuts up its shops, and like gaudy-coloured 
181 


182 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


beetles, issue in streams from their little dung heaps, 
where the spoil of the season is garnered into strong 
iron boxes or expended in Ville de Paris bonds. 
The Cafe des Allies under the long avenues of plane 
trees, does its roaring summer trade; the Connuchette 
has fluttered en route for Deauville, and the Cannois 
drinks beer in company with the local “ professionnelle,” 
whose toilette is a travesty of the last season’s modes. 
Cannes as a town ceases to exist after one has passed the 
borders of the route de Grasse. The old town, the 
harbour, and the long sand stretch of the Boulevard du 
Midi become the hub of the universe. 

The aftermath English and the hygienic French take 
long walks and excursions and become very friendly. 
But even for them arrives the day of departure, and once 
more, this time in early June, when the roses are dusty 
and even the marigolds finished, the station is crowded 
with old-fashioned leather trunks and Japanese baskets. 
The last of the season’s adventurers are departing. A 
few hivemant families in big motors, packed with less 
important guests and children in deshabille of bathing 
dress and sweaters, rush gently to and fro towards the 
more distant sands of La Bocca or of Mandelieu. Then 
indeed the joys of the summer are to those who are 
left. 

The end of the roses and honeysuckle, sees in the 
woods on the hills, a whole set of curious small orchids. 
There is one especially found in the Esterel, smallish 
and gold-spangled, brown, and purple brown, and brown 
over pink, and puce, but always brown. Its paler 
shades match the deep rose-coloured cyst only found on 


FLOWERS OF THE RIVIERA 183 ^ 


the Esterel road nearing Frejus. This brown orchid 
three times bigger would thrill a Vincent Square public. 

Then there is a bright purple orchid which grows 
where the late snows have retreated, leaving sweet¬ 
smelling mosses of late spring. These are small and 
very bright and smell of new mown hay, and ice water. 
I have noticed in those high pasture lands, and on the 
rocky slopes above, the small dark iris which grows 
round Maniacci at the edge of Etna snows. There is 
also a pale green orchid, minute, marked with embossed 
purple velvet patches; and an entirely pale yellow 
orchid which grows in oak woods amid a small even- 
patterned fern; a very sweet smelling flower, but less 
original than the others. 

Round Thorenc and above Grasse the cowslip 
flourishes, and I have picked gentians near St. Martin 
Vesubie in sight of the snows, after a walk through 
meadows of Alpine flowers. In a radius of one hour’s 
motor run one may live under palms on the seashore 
or drink “cinzano” under budding chestnuts and 
half-opened lilacs with gentians on the snow-slopes a 
few yards away. 

Then comes the long summer drought and the myrtle 
flowers white throughout the woods. Geraniums 
and bougianvilias survive ; plumbago and the sweet 
lemon-scented olive-flower gives place to the tuberose. 
Thence autumn, and heavy, heavy torrential rains, 
and wild daisies on the hills; later, early winter 
roses. A moment of waiting, and the world is golden, 
golden, golden. Mimosa everywhere, but especially 
in the hills very near Cannes. On the Croix de 


184 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Garde: but never too high up, for mimosa needs 
shelter from the cold mountain winds. Lines and lines 
of winter roses, pink and yellow, grow among iris 
in neglected farmed patches. The spring is heralded by 
hyacinths—blue mostly, and millioned-hued “ Tears of 
Venus,” drooping anemones like those on Etna, but less 
tall. Small pink ranunculus, black-thorn and may. 
Suddenly, in great vividness, the crimson-scarlet glister¬ 
ing intensive red of the real anemones. In once cultivated 
ground the purple and pink anemones spring, and single 
daffodils and white hyacinth. Wild violets border every 
stream. No need for villa gardens : they revolt; the 
world is a garden and God walks therein. 

In the plains the jasmine fields are in bloom. Entire 
famihes, even last season’s perfectly good cook, decamps, 
becomes rustic in high-heeled white shoes. These 
families are “ embauche ” by the farmers and growers 
to pick the jasmine fiower through the summer months. 
They sleep under shelter of farm or trees and the 
business is a picnic. One may witness it any summer’s 
morning between Mougins and Grasse, when the star- 
white flowers are being gathered into filthy aprons, 
^nd a cackling and a chattering echoes through the 
valley, such as any Proven 9 al “ recolte ” will evoke. 
And who would not weep for the past neat law and 
order—^the old ordered beauty of the pickers of long 
^go in their red homespun wide skirts, black shawls, 
and wide-brimmed, tiny-crowned hats. The “ costume 
du Pays” that is no more! The old needle-quilted 
cretonne and chintz skirts are found and collected 
from antique shops or old cupboards, collected and 


FLOWERS OF THE RIVIERA 185 


divided and used in modern Provencal houses as 
bedspreads. The making of the quilted needleworked 
skirts was once the family rite of a hot summer. 
The chintz was stretched on a wooden frame, cotton¬ 
wool or some thick material laid between the traced 
pattern and the chintz; intricate patterns, daisies, 
and squares, and circles, and lines, all needled in tiny 
stitch by many members of the family sitting under the 
parental lime tree before the farmhouse, during the hot 
afternoons in August. The weight and warmth of one 
of these skirts is recognized by a happy possessor. 
In the Musee Fragonard in Grasse, they preserve same 
dresses, printed shawls, aprons, and the black hats of 
the old Grassois costume. There is a great obscenity in 
modern slip-on dresses, false pearls, bangles and high 
heels as a background for this ancient custom of the 
“ r^colte.” Again, grubby old ladies in patched grey 
worsted are not romantic when seen amid the acres of 
pink May-roses that lie two feet deep in cellar waiting to 
be raked over, almost fermenting, until the lorries from 
Grasse arrive to carry them steaming and scented to 
the factories. But even more dreadful, the Cannoise 
country maiden in the latest cheap model of a 
summer’s sale, mincing with heavy ankles in arti¬ 
ficial silk stockings between the fragrant lines of 
tuberoses in a hot August sunrise. Here is a pre¬ 
tentiousness which springs from the quick habit 
of adaptation and mimicry, for the lower, bourgeois 
education cannot account for it. But the preten¬ 
tiousness is only clothes deep; the real creature can 
carry on a conversation, eat at your table, drink with 


186 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


you, without either side feeling uncomfortable. The 
innate good manners of the Proven 9 al are their most 
beautiful attribute. If I must be robbed, lied to, or 
tricked, let it be done by a Proven 9 al of Roman-Greek, 
Ligurian descent! God and history have made the 
Proven 9 al lazy, dreadfully, happily lazy, able to pass a 
summer basking in the sun, or a winter like a casserole, 
simmering gently in comfortable red wine beside the 
fire; but to punish him just a little God has made him 
at times to be just a little mad. He must dance, or 
sing very loudly, or drink too much, or chase the 
mysterious Golden Goat only seen and never caught (a 
sort of tantalizing Blue Bird of Unhappiness, this 
Proven 9 al Chevre d’or). The Golden Goat is seen in 
Arles, it is seen in Grasse, golden and lonely and very 
fleet, as a vision. It is a Proven 9 al legend—but 
hundreds of years before the Proven 9 al was in being, 
the people round Biot worshipped at the altar of the 
Golden Goat—perhaps Jupiter’s goat. But now it is 
a fleeting golden vision in the mind and in the literature 
of the land, and no one who has once seen it is ever 
quite comfortably happy again. But let no senti¬ 
mentalist imagine the old customs, old songs, old 
costumes, will ever be seriously revived in Southern 
France—and here I ponder; am I quite correct in this 
statement ? At this moment two stout dark maidens 
are at my studio door, in wide hats and ribbons and 
high heels and little trinkets and white thread long 
gloves—the Sunday toilette of a Cannoise virgin. My 
studio is miles from a road, up a hill surrounded by 
olives, miles from town or village. The maidens 


FLOWERS OF THE RIVIERA 18T 


suddenly remind me of sentimental London; they 
have httle trays attached by ribbons round their necks, 
and they are selling little flags and badges! This is 
the first flag day I have met on the Riviera, and surely 
the first that has ever pushed its way into the fortresses 
of stone terrace and olive on the hills round Cannes. 
There are “ Mistral ” meetings and arranged costumed 
fetes from time to time, but the spontaneousness has 
gone from the life of the people—^the spontaneous song 
and dance and the gay uniform of the country. 

Here is a short Calendar of Riviera flowers. 

January ,—Early mimosa, winter roses grown for 
export. 

February ,—Wild blue hyacinths, violets, cassis (a 
recolte), white cultivated hyacinths, daffodils, garden 
anemones, garden stocks, wallflower, wild violets. 

March ,—Wild anemones—^pale pink and bright 
scarlet, pansies, daisies, sweet-peas, iris. 

April, —Roses, marigolds, wild orchids, wild gladioli, 
cyst, sweet-peas, pinks, nasturtiums, love-in-the-mist, 
geraniums, wisteria, heliotrope. 

May ,—Orange flowers (recolte), daisies, plumbago, 
honeysuckle, tilleuil flowers, roses, lilies, cannae, broom, 
gorse, privet, field flowers of all sorts, all English summer 
plants, wild flax, lavender, a small blue orchid. On the 
mountains, wild iris, cowslips, gentians, etc. 

June ,—The first droughts begin. Hydrangeas and 
geraniums; wild scabius. 

July ,—Jasmin (recolte). 


188 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


July .—^Jasmin (recolte), the wild myrtle flowers, 
oleanders. 

August .—^Wild lavender in the woods, tuberoses 
(recolte), jasmin, sunflowers. 

September. —^Fuschias, nasturtiums, chrysanthemums, 
dahlias, zinnias, asters, bougainvilia. 

October .—Field daisies. 

November .—^Early stocks. 

December .—^Winter roses, primulas. 

In this slight list I have not differentiated between 
a Cannes garden and a country garden. In a Cannes 
garden, sheltered, I think anything will grow at any 
time. 


PROVENCAL DISHES AND 
WHERE TO EAT THEM 
































































XX 


PROVENCAL DISHES AND WHERE TO 
EAT THEM 

D uring the summer the Casino is shut and most 
of the big hotels, the Reserve, the Cap d’An¬ 
tibes and all the local tea places within easy 
drive of Cannes ; and yet the warm nights invite linger¬ 
ing along high mountain roads and in the cool woods. 
Having suffered from not knowing where to go to get a 
meal within an hour’s run of Cannes or Nice, I have made 
a list of spots where food is good. 

Are you returning from a spin to Thorenc or some of 
the higher mountain towns? Then see, on my little 
inaccurate but adequate map, made from memory, how, 
by following the road from Grasse to Nice, the Route 
Nationale over the mountains, you may arrive at a 
large board in the village of Villeneuve-Loubet, which 
points to a road marked “ Nice ”—and which turns to 
the left. This road leads to the village of La Colle, 
leads through and down one of the smaller but very 
lovely gorges of the “ Loupe,” foaming and green, some 
hundred feet below the red earth and rock precipices, 
and where the road meets the river on a level, is 
191 


192 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


the Chapel of St. Donnat and the remains of a mill. 
Leave the road and find a narrow wooden bridge span¬ 
ning the river, and there amid oaks are small tables— 
and the trout leap at your approach from the big tanks 
near the river. Here may you eat trout and the best 
in the world. And also they will give you a rapturous 
Italian soup done with pate and cheese and eggs, and 
stuffed savoury artichokes so young and tender that 
the whole fruit may be eaten, almost as cream. And 
here you may eat chicken stewed with olives and tiny 
onions and many other good things—imder the moon— 
for I have never tried the Restaurant except in summer. 
The Restaurants of the Gorge du Loup are passable 
at all seasons. At Antibes near the old Port is also 
a small cafe where the food is good. The Restaurant 
on the Island of Ste. Marguerite is open winter and 
summer—^the cooking of a special dinner is first class. 
This is not a cheap restaurant, but the food is well- 
done and well-served and the wine is good. 

The Hotel at Le Trayas on the Comiche d’or between 
Cannes and St. Raphael is famous for its fish dinners. 
They cook “ rouget ” there “ a merveille,” in oil. 
These small reddish “ rougets ” are hard to catch and 
rare, hke all Mediterranean fish; they are best when 
cooked after a recipe hailing from Ventimiglia on the 
frontier, and used in some Cannes households. The fish 
is stewed in oil and black olives with a puree of tomatoes 
added, and served together. 

Italian 'pdte dishes naturally play a role in a cooking 
which is run by a nation whose cooks are half Italian, 
or, at least, Nicois, or from the border. 


PROVENCAL DISHES 


193 


Ravioli, squared pate pasties stuffed with seasoned 
mincemeat and vegetables, is a favourite dish. The 
Grassois eat a flat open tart baked with hashed 
fresh anchovies, garlic, onion, and black olives. This 
is called Tourta or Pisalla. The peasants cook it for 
Sundays or feasts. The paste is always made with 
oil and a little warm water. La Bouillabaisse is made in 
Cannes by a stout smiling dame whose husband is a 
fisherman-sailor. They own a rather grubby little cafe 
on the old Port, mainly frequented by sailors or by the 
chosen few who know what to eat and don’t mind 
where it is found. La mere Margot must be warned 
some hours ahead, for lobster is not always procurable, 
and bouillabaisse without lobster is not possible, though 
quite superior restaurants fancy otherwise. There is a 
Cannes and a Grassois manner of cooking fish which is 
too excellent not to be passed on. In oil, naturally, 
stewed in company with capers, small carrots and a hint 
of anchovy. 

But all this makes me feel I will compile a 
small lovely book of Riviera dishes ere these too die 
like other food habits and customs. Who would not 
know the joys of cabbage ! those whose childhood has 
been poisoned by scenes of rebellion, wherein coldish, 
colder, cold, icy-cold, dry or water-soaked greenish 
cabbage played a great part. Yet cabbages grow in 
England, and, God save us, are still eaten. Should I be 
undermining one of the strengths of England (for this 
mortifying of the inside flesh must be a source of moral 
strength ) if I give a pleasant way of enjoying cabbage ? 
And I dedicate this part of this chapter to my dear 
N 


194 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


friend and fellow home-keeper, Mrs. Arthur Waugh, 
chateleine and gardener of “Underhill,” and to all the 
cabbages in her garden. 

Take a frying pan—^that’s a professional touch— 
mince a small quantity of onions, fry them in oil or 
butter, add minced meat, vegetables, rice or anything 
you like, stir in the yoke of one egg. Fry all together. 
Take a cabbage, don’t despise it, but take out 
the heart and chop it small; boil it and fry in with 
your other mixture. Choose twelve good leaves and 
boil them in water {really), but not over long. Spread 
each leaf and fill it with some of that good-smelling 
frying mixture and wrap the leaves round, making neat 
little cabbage paekages. Place these in a pan, a spot of 
butter on each, and put in oven until slightly browned. 
And the possibilities and joys of a homely cabbage are 
before you! 

For the help of anyone taking that lovely drive up 
to St. Martin Vesubie, they may well stop at a 
dusty spot on the Glacier river, Var, at the meeting of 
the many roads from St. Martin, from Grasse, from 
Peuget Thegniers, from Nice, etc. The dusty village is 
called Vesubie and is at the mouth of the Vesubie 
river ; there, at the second inn called Cite A. ... is an 
excellent cook and a good table d’hdte for a very small 
sum. Ask here for their uncooked ham, most excellent, 
but cut too thick. 

Then there should be a dissertation on the homely 
Rabbit a la Proven 9 al. Civet is too well known to be 
here divulged; but what of the casserole rabbit in 
white wine ? Oil, please, boiling, bubbling oil, and the 


PROVENCAL DISHES 


195 


rabbit neatly cut up. Fry it lightly in company with 
onions, three small carrots and a bay leaf, then place all 
this good fry in a pot or casserole with more onions 
(small round ones), add a little water, and let it all stew. 
When nearly cooked add a wineglass of white wine. 

Gnocchi is another dish of Provencal fame and its 
measures and methods are these :— 

A puree of potatoes ; a pate made of flour and warm 
water; introduce the potatoes and a very little oil. 
Some cooks add the whipped white of egg ; roll and cut 
in tricorns and boil; powder with grated cheese. 

And Tomatoes —^Here is their epitomy—^here is the 
tomato a la Proven 9 al:—^a savoury business, calling 
for—^not too ripe tomatoes divided into half, the pulpiest 
portions containing pips deftly extracted and mixed 
with a curious fine hash of boiled spinach, breadcrumbs, 
an egg, onions (very fine) and a speck of garlic—^if your 
inside appreciates this delicious flavoiu*. This mixture 
is placed in a frying pan with oil, and when well sizzling 
is replaced in the tomatoes. Fine breadcrumbs are 
sprinkled on top, and the oven receives all. 

When the garden teams with artichokes and broad 
beans and peas —cull all youngs oh, but very young ; the 
’chokes must not be bigger than an egg, the beans no 
bigger than a sixpenny piece. That’s the secret! Cut 
the sharp points off the tops of the artichokes, and take 
away the six longest leaves. Then place all together 
in a casserole with oil or butter, add a few small squares 
of bacon, and let it all cook until fit to eat. It is safer 
to cook, in water, the artichokes apart, for they must be 
soft enough to be eaten entirely—^like a bean. 


196 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


Stuffed artichokes too are delicious. Broad Beaus 
peeled of their outer skin when fairly young, served with 
oil and vinegar make a good salad—if you like queer 
salads. 


AMATEUR FARMING IN 
PROVENCE 









t f - 










XXI 

AMATEUR FARMING IN PROVENCE 


EW people whose outlook on the Cote d’Or is^ 



from the point of advantage of a “ Sleeper,” 


running along the marvellous railway line from 
Marseilles to Cannes, would believe that on the pine- 
covered hills and in olive shaded valleys between Cannes 
and Grasse, amateur efforts at various kinds of farming 
are in progress. 

This chapter is not a paean of success. To succeed 
on the soil one must be either a peasant or a Russian 
refugee, for the peasant is his own labourer; he is his 
own proprietor since his father gave him the soil as a gift 
of the Revolution. The peasant inhabits a two roomed 
dilapidation of delicious Proven 9 al tiles on roof and floor, 
furnished with a bedstead and a table, both luxuries for 
winter ; during the summer the sky is his tent and the 
earth, soft, under the newly-dug olive roots, his bed. 
For food, a few raw tomatoes, a root of garlic and ripe 
figs or dried figs ; and in winter, when there is less work 
to do late in the fields, the farmer’s wife makes a wonder¬ 
ful luscious dish called “ la soupe.” No auditor would 
be patient while I enlarged upon the “soupe.”— 
But, oh! long-suffering men of England, when you 


199 


200 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


next sit over that thin liquid called soup without 
the “ e ”—^think well what the little “ e ” may mean— 
onions, young carrots, a potato, beans (dried), a few 
herbs, a little oil, a good deal of cheese and some fresh 
pate—(a sort of ribbon-like macaroni). And now let’s 
leave the soupe and on to the farming. But this menu 
of the humble and the rich landowners is the reason of 
the success of France as an agricultural country, though 
no Norman farmer would go without his meat and his 
salad he includes the soup in his economies. The 
main culture of this district are the olives, the vine and 
the recoltes of jasmine, tuberoses and orange flowers, 
sold to the perfumers of Grasse, that exquisite and 
ancient town stretching itself luxuriantly along the 
slopes of the high mountains. 

This war has finished for some years or for ever the 
culture of flowers which has been since the first annals 
of Cannes : in the early fourteenth and fifteenth century 
we read of the culture of mulberry trees, “ pinks of 
Provence, roses of the south.” Last year we gave our 
roses to the pigs, for their price was below profit, about 
twenty centimes the kilo. 

Jasmine —^which rose to 27 francs the kilo after the war, 
is now down to 7 francs ; small profit unless the family 
is sufficiently big to exclude outsiders whose services— 
from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m.—^with many hours off, vary from 
ten francs upwards per day. The woman pickers are 
paid by the kilo. 

Orange flower —a cheap culture once the trees have 
been manured. The factories pay four francs fifty 
centimes the kilo and the pickers take as much as 16 


FARMING IN PROVENCE 201 


francs per day. The average recolte of a terrace of 
twenty orange trees is 160 kilo. Two pickers could 
manage this number of trees. 

Tuberoses require little labour if planted thickly as the 
peasants do, to avoid the trouble of weeding. They 
fetched last year twelve to sixteen francs the kilo. This 
year seven francs! 

Culture on any large scale can never be a success 
here, owing to wages, scarcity of water at times and the 
fluctuating perfume market. 

The olive pays its way as all local cooking is done with 
oil. 

One thing remains— 

The vine. To any intelligent man who will take the 
trouble to go for a few months to the agricultural 
college at Montpellier, the vine may mean a living and 
probably more. Grapes grown in the bright red, alluvial 
soil, or on the rocky soil bordering pine woods, produce 
and have always produced a wine which takes its name 
from the chief village of the district and is celebrated 
all over France. As yet it has not been grown on an 
extensive scale. 

The outlay is not much greater than for any other 
culture, and most farm houses are built over old, cool 
cellars quite suitable for wine pressing on a small scale. 
An interesting perspective in view of the constant labour 
of digging the earth in a vineyard, or, as they call 
it here, to bicker, is the lately avowed fact that this 
labour may be diminished to a third, by the use of a 
small motor tractor well able to work in the spaces 
between the vines. 


202 CANNES AND THE HILLS 


This culture needs a chapter to itself, and I must 
pass over the details. 

Ground in this district that has at no too recent date 
been “ defence ”—^that is, very deeply dug and turned 
over with an agricultural instrument called “ becu ”— 
is valued from 5 fcs, to 2.50 the square metre. With 
the exchange at 52 fcs. to the pound, this can easily 
be reckoned in present values. To defoncer a terrace, 
for nearly all land is laid out in slightly sloping series 
of stone-banked terraces, may cost on an average 10 
francs per day and very few metres are done in one day. 
Labour, mostly Italian from Northern Italy or Savoy, is 
a huge and ever-increasing expense. 

Manure is a difficulty. Horses are very scarce. 
Cows almost tmknown. The peasant, therefore, uses 
the sweepings of his goats, his rabbits, hens and pigs. 

Sewage, usually preserved on the terraces in halfsunk 
oil jars made of the yellow clay of Vallaures, is the most 
precious fertilizer. 

Chemical manures, though efficacious in some cases, 
are mostly too active in this soil so permeated by the 
fiercest sun in Europe. 

I must not terminate without a word about chickens ! 

At St. Raphael, some thirty miles from here, a French¬ 
man is producing and selling eggs and chickens at a 
large profit. A well-known Englishman, who once took 
show prizes for agricultural animals, and had large 
farm-lands in England, has bought a farm near Cannes, 
and he and his wife between the glorious hours of dawn 
and sunrise manage to pursue this “ culture ” to their 
advantage, and the rest of the day is spent on the golf* 


FARMING IN PROVENCE 203 


links or at the Casino. In this case there was no trouble 
about capital and outlay, and the market is of a private 
nature. 

The Russian refugees in the long low valleys between 
Cannes and Ranguin are pursuing this livelihood with 
some success. Success depends on the water-supply 
and on the races of fowls used for breeding. Com in 
small quantities can be grown for chicken food, never 
or seldom in large quantities because of the limited 
space of the terraces. 

Maize, if irrigated, grows well and provides grain for 
the chickens; its long green leaves furnish much 
relished food for rabbits. This animal is precarious; 
the breed of the country is best, and stands the summer 
heat and drought. 

Vegetables, growing with incredible rapidity, can be 
just made to pay, demanding manure and constant 
irrigation during summer months. 

Taken with the purpose of living within a small 
income, in a superb climate near the most expensive 
town in France, with an average amount of work done 
by oneself and a capital of £500, a farm in the C6te 
d’Or may be a delightful and not disadvantageous 
proposition. 


FINALE 


“ ^ ^ARINA,” says Wisdom, lying in Virgilian ease 

I \ /1 under the fig tree, “ you are eating green 
^ almonds and you will die of a pain. Re¬ 
member the story of “ Sauf Malheur.” 

“Don’t remind me of either misfortune,” I reply, 
“ to die of eating green almonds is a worthy death, 
and ‘ Sauf Malheur ’ I am keeping for another book; 
even Nature is bidding you hold your peace; for that 
dry, hard, green fig has hit you in the eye.” 

“ That,” says Wisdom, turning round on to his 
stomach, “ is a warning that the drought is upon us— 
and now, God be praised, the days of the swim before 
breakfast may begin—^the days of idleness in some shade, 
while the sun-baked earth cracks around us—the days of 
the continuous screech of the cicada; days with long hot 
nights spent under the olives; days of the big drought; 
and days, thank God, when even your pen will cease 
to scratch.” 

Marina replies: “ Your impatience is needless, for 
the book now ends.” 


THE END 


204 


These are the Ancestors and Invaders of 
THE People of Cannes 

B.c. —The Celto Ligurians ^the Oxybians) li\ung 
between the Esterel and the Var. Their 
capital is Egitna or Ekana. 

160 B.c. —The Phoenicians. 

155 B.c. —The Greeks or Phocians trading from their 
colony at Marseilles. 

150 B.c.l The Romans. Cannes is named Castrum 
50 B.c.J Marsellinum and later Castrum Romag- 
num. 

500—The Lombards sack Castrum Marsellinum. 

800—The Saracens likewise in the seventh and ninth 
centuries. 

900—The Moors from Spain burn the entire coast, 
from the Rhone to Nice, in the reign of 
“ Louis the Blind.” 

1035 —Kingdom of Provence embraces Cannes and the 
Litoral. 

1100—The Counts of Provence take Cannes into their 
keeping after the fall of the Eastern 
Empire. Cannes is called Castrum Canois 
and the town of the Suquet is built. 

1300 —The Abbot of Les Lerins Islands builds the 
chateaux of St. Honorat and the Suquet 
205 


/ 

206 CANNES AND THE HILLS 

for protection against the infidels, and to 
reward these works Raymond Beranger, 
Count of Provence, exempts Cannes and 
the Islands from all taxes. Cannes is 
renamed Castrum Francum. 

1447—Under King Rene de Provence Cannes becomes a 
Municipality and has three councils. 

1519—Charles V. invades Cannes, and a French fleet 
under Andrea Doria attacks the invaders. 

The Spaniards pillage the country. Anne de 
Montmorency, to end war, creates a 
famine. 

1579 —Religious wars devastate the country. 

1635—The Spaniards under Philip IV. attack St. 

Honorat and the coastal towns. They 
remain in Cannes and Grasse a year. 

1706 —^The Piedmontese overrun the country. 

1746 —The Austrians or Germans, under General Maxi¬ 
milian Brown, pillage the Litoral. 

1779 —The English bombard the coast. 

1815 —Napoleon lands from Elba, at Golfe Jouan, 
and camps in Cannes, en route for Paris. 
1834 —^Lord Brougham visits Cannes and remains. 

Note, —History, owing to lack of space, must perforce 
stop at this arrival, and the author presents her apologies 
to all the illustrious personages who followed, beginning 
with King Edward VII., and ending with Monsieur 
Cornuch6, to say nothing of the innumerable dethroned 
monarchs who came between. 


PRINTED BY THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH 







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